Pakistan's power regulator approved a $47 billion, decade-long electricity expansion plan Friday, but rejected a $900 million battery storage investment as unjustified and revealed that the country's cheapest-ever renewable power sat excluded from national planning for more than a year, despite repeated regulatory warnings. The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) approved the Integrated System Plan (ISP) 2025-35 submitted by the Independent System & Market Operator (ISMO), covering generation and transmission needs through 2035.
The plan projects peak demand rising from 26,950 megawatts in 2025 to 35,521 MW by 2035, requiring 26,045 MW of new capacity, alongside the retirement of 2,577 MW, at a projected cost of $47.13 billion. Transmission upgrades add a further $10.65 billion. Nepra excluded a proposed Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) from approval, ruling that its cost had never actually been run through ISMO's optimization model.
What makes this decision unusual is that Nepra's own members did not fully agree with each other, and each wrote a separate note explaining their concerns. Member Maqsood Anwar Khan objected to the removal of a few hydropower projects that had earlier been treated as approved and safe, warning it could scare away investors.
The sharpest criticism came from within Nepra itself. Member Amina Ahmed, in a pointed dissenting note, wrote that K-Electric secured renewable auction tariffs as low as 3.09 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour in late 2024, yet ISMO left roughly 640 MW of those projects out of its plans for over a year. Nepra Chairman Waseem Mukhtar supported the final decision but raised a bigger worry regarding excess capacity payments.