IGCEP 2025-35: Revising the Plan While Demand Shifts under Solar

Through 2025 the system operator updated the Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan into a 2025-35 revision, building on the April 2024 filing. The revision process itself tells a story: stakeholder fights over committed projects, shifting hydro CODs, and a demand profile disturbed by net metering. Assumptions about Dasu, Mohmand, Diamer Bhasha, coastal wind, and KE interconnection change. Transition Economics Institute urges NEPRA to require a dedicated distributed-energy sensitivity in every IGCEP: high, medium, and low rooftop penetration with explicit effects on load factor and residual peak.

The operator’s own later DSM scenarios show the profession knows load factor has fallen from historical bands near 70 per cent toward lower ranges. Forced capacity addition scenarios versus unconstrained least-cost scenarios should be published side by side in plain language. Hydro delays are costly but honesty about COD slip is better than fantasy schedules that distort near-term thermal decisions.