Booming solar capacity additions in Pakistan have been making global headlines, but industry leaders are now calling for quick deployment of energy storage to complement PV growth.

Solar module imports reached an estimated 17 GW in 2024, but while BESS imports have not achieved similar volumes, the segment is growing. Pakistan imported an estimated 1.25 GWh of lithium-ion battery packs in 2024, according to IEEFA data, plus another 400 MWh in the first two months of 2025.

This was despite battery energy storage facing a raft of taxes and custom duties that combine for an effective rate of 48% on imported BESS. By contrast, the Pakistan government only proposed an 18% general sales tax on imported solar in June 2025 – well into the PV import boom. It was implemented at 10%.

The Pakistan Solar Association has opposed duties on both and urgently wants to see greater energy storage deployment.

“You need to declare a battery emergency right now,” Pakistan Solar Association chairman Waqas Haroon Moosa told ESS News.

Moosa, who is also CEO of Lahore-based Hadron Solar, argued the problem facing Pakistan’s grid is not overgeneration, but low demand. He said increased electrification – including converting some of Pakistan’s more than 20 million gasoline motorbikes to become electric vehicles (EVs) – could create necessary demand while reducing the country’s exposure to fossil fuel price volatility.

“As a country, Pakistan has a very low per capita consumption of electricity. I was reading the World Bank figures from 2023, and Pakistan has a per capita consumption of electricity of 628 kWh per person, per year, whereas India is like 1,056 kWh. The world is at around 3,400 kWh – that’s really where the magic is. Solar is helping to bridge this gap,” he said.

Adding energy storage to spread consumption throughout the day is the missing piece of the puzzle, according to Moosa, who wants to see investment in grid-scale BESS coupled with supportive regulations.

“We need to start talking to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank and all these battery companies. If you want to test out your batteries, here is the place you can come and [test] within these standards, like a sandbox,” said Moosa.

Behind the meter, Usman Ahmad, CEO of Nizam Energy, predicted that changes to net metering could lead to a surge in energy storage installations.

Ahmad has been in the Pakistan solar market since the very beginning. Founded in 2012, Nizam Energy has worked on more than 5,000 solar projects, deploying over 500 MW of total capacity. The company developed one of Pakistan’s few utility-scale solar projects in partnership with Norwegian multinational Scatec – a 150 MW project in Sukkur, Sindh province. It also operates as a distribution business and is active in the C&I and residential segments.

Ahmad predicted two shifts in the market. “There is a lot of talk of net metering customers putting extra power onto the grid, but these are the wealthy 500,000 people who will all eventually buy an EV,” he said. Ahmad added that on the day the government changes net metering policy, “we’re going to have a flywheel of storage capacity.”

“I think we will soon be at an inflection point where some of these changes will need to be made. Maybe not today, but in the next year I think we will have to do it for the sustainability of the industry,” he said.

Three attempts have already been made to transition from net metering to net billing in Pakistan – a change that would see consumers credited at a lower rate for energy exports – but Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has intervened each time to postpone the switch.