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

221 points by toomuchtodo

by abdullahkhalids

4 subcomments

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 price shock. This spiraled into rich people just buying rooftop solar systems, which exacerbated the grid problems even more.
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@31.3611237,74.2493456,357m/data...
[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@24.8014179,67.0460688,415m/data...

by neebz

2 subcomments

We switched to solar in 2021 expecting a 3.5-year payback. Electricity prices rose so fast that we recovered the investment in under two years.
Also the national grid is notorious for it's frequent blackouts (load-shedding) since the early ’90s. Solar allowed us to have uninterrupted supply in the mornings and longer backups during night.

by ZeroConcerns

1 subcomments

Excellent results, even if the source article is a bit government-optimistic-press-releasy. The less-good news is that, even with abundant solar, you still need a functional grid (even more so than in traditional top-down energy distribution schemes) in order for everyone to take advantage of it, but this is a problem that lots of rich nations are working through right now, so affordable off-the-shelf solutions are bound to appear in the near future.
And I wish Pakistan the best in taking advantage of those and/or their home-grown ingenuity!

by pfdietz

9 subcomments

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.

by darkteflon

0 subcomment

> The south Asian nation is planning to introduce new tariffs for large solar users, as well as changes to fee structures to ensure businesses with panels share equally in the costs of grid upkeep, she said.
Of course. We wouldn’t want the benefit of a public good to accrue to the public now, would we.

by unglaublich

1 subcomments

Great, you can easily switch them off or even better, store heat under ground for the winter.

by toomuchtodo

0 subcomment

by torginus

0 subcomment

I feel like this is disingenuous - I have solar, and peak power exceeds demand by a sizeable margin, but there are week long stretches with basically no solar. Given how cheap panels, are, it makes a ton of sense to oversize your system, and charge your batteries in the couple hour stretches where the sun does happen to shine.

by bitxbitxbitcoin

4 subcomments

by woodpanel

2 subcomments

Imagine being the CCP and you’ve managed to turn your industrial capacity into the world‘s single largest renewable energy source. PV‘s Saudi-Arabia.

by mannanj

3 subcomments

by SackSolStr

3 subcomments

The payback periods get me confused. A relative set up solar a year ago in one of the sunniest places in Europe, the Canaries, cost €7,000 for 6KW. He just ran the math on it and found out that the payback period is 15 years. The only way to make it profitable is government subsidies. How can it be profitable to install solar in continental Europe where taxes and labor costs are much higher while having much less sun? Why are we using taxpayers' money to subsidize such negative NPV projects?