• Nepra releases draft regulations, seeking feedback within 30 days before repealing 2015 legislation
• Life of new contracts to be reduced from seven to five years

ISLAMABAD: After repeated botched attempts by the power division, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra), mandated by the government, has now moved to cut size, life and repayment rates of the net-metered solar power consumers by almost half in an apparent attempt to protect an expensive and inefficient power utility business from irrelevance and complete collapse.

The regulator formally released draft Prosumer Regulations, 2025, on Tuesday for public comments within 30 days before repealing the Alternative and Renewable Energy Distributed Generation and Net Metering Regulations, 2015. The revision in net-metering policy is aimed at creating a ‘balance’ between the interests of the utilities and consumers by allowing them to hedge against unaffordable rates but without allowing this to be a profitable business.

Under the proposed measures, the prosumers — a term used for net-metered users being solar producers as well as consumers — would not be allowed to install solar systems for net metering beyond their original sanctioned load, thus reducing the capacity limit by 50pc. For example, a 10-kilowatt (kW)........

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