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Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

reuters.com

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Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#41

Post by namibj »

jaltekruse wrote: post #24
thfuran wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will it? I’m not sure how the utilities structure their prices wrt the actual cost, but they definitely separate the baseline connection cost from usage on bills (at least in the US), so they may not be killed by people using very little power as long as the connection fee actually covers things.

Unfortunately the connection fee does not cover all fixed cost. For a long time the model has been fairly "progressive" in this regard. Some of the fixed costs of the grid have been paid for by amortization over the per Kw cost, which had the effect of charging people who used more a larger chunk of these fixed costs. Now with the option to provide your own power if you have upfront capital for solar can build as big…

What you could do is bill per energy in e.g. 15 minute chunks, and separately bill for transformer/line capacity by e.g. the peak usage in any such chunk over the contract period, like they do in Germany for atypical load profile industrial users since decades ago.

Net metering is overall just entirely stupid as a concept; measure inbound and outbound flow separately if you can't just measure the 15 minute chunks; bill grid fees on the energy price on inbound and only pay energy price on outbound. Or even bill grid fees on outbound up to one of many available large substations, and thus handle the issue of demand across large distances making buildout of solar in a convenient but far away place not being disincentivized vs. more-demand-local buildout.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#43

Post by peppersghost93 »

UltraSane wrote: post #37
peppersghost93 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

overprovision for their needs during the day and utilize battery power at night.

Solar panels are cheap but batteries are very expensive.

They can be depending on your needs. Lithium iron phosphate batteries are pretty cheap for their capacity. If you build your own power station with them you'd be surprised how far your money goes.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#44

Post by jstanley »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #34
saidinesh5 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing: fewer people buying from the power companies/grid => the fixed costs of these companies are pushed onto the poorer customers, who already couldn't afford much.

This is correct. But there is a bit more. Almost all power plants in Pakistan are built with state-backed dollar-denominated loans (reason govt incompetence+corruption). This means if grid demand goes down, power plants don't go out of business like they would in a market based system. Instead, they keep collecting dollar-denominated interest paid by the state, even if they produce zero power. The state mitigates thi…

So the power plants lend dollars to the state so that they can pay to build the power plant?

Or else I don't see how the power plants are collecting the interest?

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#45

Post by toomuchtodo »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #34
saidinesh5 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing: fewer people buying from the power companies/grid => the fixed costs of these companies are pushed onto the poorer customers, who already couldn't afford much.

This is correct. But there is a bit more. Almost all power plants in Pakistan are built with state-backed dollar-denominated loans (reason govt incompetence+corruption). This means if grid demand goes down, power plants don't go out of business like they would in a market based system. Instead, they keep collecting dollar-denominated interest paid by the state, even if they produce zero power. The state mitigates thi…

It is unfortunate that the government of Pakistan and their investors (China and the IMF) made poor investment decisions. They should feel free to go back to debt holders to renegotiate the debt, or default on it and hand the stranded assets back to creditors. The death spiral is of their own making, and will only accelerate as solar PV and battery cost declines continue. Electricity consumers will simply go off the grid. Such is the risk of unsophisticated investors not understanding the market in which they invest. Capital being at risk is an inherent component of investment.

My condolences and sympathy to the people of Pakistan caught in the mess. The global energy transition will be volatile.

Solar electricity every hour of every day is here and it changes everything - https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/solar-electricity-e... - June 21st, 2025

Stranded fossil-fuel assets translate to major losses for investors in advanced economies - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01356-y | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01356-y - May 26th, 2022

Rethinking Energy -- 100% Solar, Wind and Batteries Is Just The Beginning - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM2RxWtF4Ds - January 2021

Who owns the distressed fossil generation collateralized debt? China. Where is Pakistan importing cleantech from? China. There is some IMF debt in there as well, for accuracy.

How Chinese loans trapped Pakistan's economy - https://www.dw.com/en/how-chinese-loans-trapped-pakistans-ec... - August 2nd, 2024

Emeber Energy: China Cleantech Exports Data Explorer - https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... (updated monthly)

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#46

Post by Animats »

hamdingers wrote: post #16
bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: post #9

How many years before this happens in parts of the United States?

In California, grid-tied rooftop solar was putting energy prices into the negative so often that they reconfigured the NEM to discourage export back to the grid and encourage battery storage.

It seems to have worked, too.[1]

Batteries are the invisible change in the power business. They don't take up much land area. They're not visible to the public. Just being able to charge batteries during low power cost periods changes the whole economics of the industry.

Whether battery banks should be allowed to sell back to the grid is a tough question. Texas says no.[2] It's potentially "dispatchable" power, but only until the battery runs down.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-10-17/califor...

[2] https://www.ercot.com/mktrules/keypriorities/bes/ktc8

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#47

Post by elzbardico »

riku_iki wrote: post #10
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #6

I would encourage people to go look at satellite view of random "rich" neighbourhoods in Pakistan, and note how many solar panels there are on rooftops. Here is the first one I scrolled to in Lahore [1], and one in Karachi [2] Pakistan's grid prices tripled or more since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, because the extremely mismanaged and poorly designed electricity system+economy could not handle the energy pri…

> rich people just buying rooftop solar systems, which exacerbated the grid problems even more. how it exacerbated problems exactly?..

Because storage is incredibly expensive and thus, for every GW of installed solar capacity you need and an exact another GW reserve capacity from other sources for the rare times when the sun doesn't shine (like, for example, during the night or during large spells of bad weather).

Besides being intermittent, solar and wind are not really dispatchable, that is, the grid operator doesn't have many levers to control the power output of a plan, and thus this imposes more stress on the other dispatchable power sources.

Some of those backup sources are not very flexible and take a long time to turn on and off, like coal based, and a lot of nuclear plants. Others, can be brought up online, ramped up and down faster, like gas turbines and hydro.

But other than gas turbine, most other firm sources economics are based on a predictable demand and a minimum duty cycle. A nuclear plant is very capital expensive, have an excellent capacity factor, but, it can't pay itself and its investor if it is not going to be run most of the time.

Base load is cheaper, because you dilute fixed costs, peak load is more expensive, because you sell less units to dilute your fixed costs.

Despite whatever the renewable lobby says, experience has shown over and over, that after a certain proportion of intermittent generation in a grid, large frequency excursions, deteriorated economics and frequent load shedding events are rather the norm than the exception.

AC grids are stupidly complex beasts. Most politicians, journalists and investors that drive our current discourse on the grid don't have even the most basic pre-requirements to understand it.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#48

Post by jasonsb »

ghc wrote: post #27
pfdietz wrote: post #3

What this shows is solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model. Even without net metering, demand destruction will cause the traditional model to stop working.

Commercial and industrial use already makes up a large portion of demand. While the model will change to cater less to residential needs, overall demand for stable, high voltage generation is not going to go down.

Commercial properties often have enough roof area to meet most of their daytime demand on-site. And industrial consumption in Western countries has been flat or declining for years, so "stable, high-voltage generation" may face less demand than assumed.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#49

Post by andor »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #40
SoftTalker wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people aren’t interested in being responsible for their own electrical generation. Especially with payback still being on the order of decades

Most people don’t have the capital to be responsible for their own electricity generation, except the rich.

It's really not expensive anymore. There's a Black Friday deal on amazon.de for an entry-level Anker Solix system with 4x500W panels and a 2.6 kWh battery. 1200 EUR.

For those that don't have the cash, financing is available.

Have you read this, about SunKing and SunCulture in Africa, recently posted on HN: https://climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarpunk-is-already...

Their smallest solar products are small lanterns. Simply having a pollution-free source of light is already a quality of life improvement for some people. One step up is to add a USB port to charge phones.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#50

Post by abdullahkhalids »

jstanley wrote: post #44
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct. But there is a bit more. Almost all power plants in Pakistan are built with state-backed dollar-denominated loans (reason govt incompetence+corruption). This means if grid demand goes down, power plants don't go out of business like they would in a market based system. Instead, they keep collecting dollar-denominated interest paid by the state, even if they produce zero power. The state mitigates thi…

So the power plants lend dollars to the state so that they can pay to build the power plant? Or else I don't see how the power plants are collecting the interest?

Usually there are three parties in these agreements.

1. State of Pakistan

2. Someone with dollars (the investors)

3. Local businessman who are willing run the power plant.

The three parties come to an agreement on what the minimum returns should be on the investment. Say 10% annual. Then the investors give money to the businessman, who then import the power plant equipment and start operating it. The state-run electricity distribution companies buys from the power plant as needed and pays them the unit price set by the State of Pakistan. Part of this is converted into dollars at some pre-agreed rate and transferred to the investors.

In all this, if the total returns to the investor are above 10%, then all is good. However, if the grid demand has fallen, and the distribution company didn't buy a lot of units from the power plant, then the State of Pakistan has to step in and give the investors the difference to make up the 10% returns.

Yes, it is an insane system.

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