Rooftop Solar Back at the DISCO Desk: The 25 kW Approval and the 80% Transformer Ceiling

For most of 2026, a household in Lahore or Peshawar that wanted to connect a rooftop solar system to the grid has had to deal with two regulators of a sort. The first was the familiar one, the distribution company that owns the transformer outside the house and installs the meter. The second was the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority, which the Prosumer Regulations of 9 February 2026 placed at the end of every application as the body that had to accord concurrence before billing could begin.

Two amendments since then, one in April and one in August, have taken the regulator back out of the small end of the market. Systems of 25 kW or below now need neither a NEPRA fee nor NEPRA concurrence, and the DISCO grants the approval itself. Under the 2015 regulations, distributed generation of 25 kW or below did not need a licence from NEPRA, and applications were processed directly by the DISCOs without any fee.

According to Dawn, the Pakistan Solar Association, the Pakistan Alternative Energy Association and two private firms objected at public hearings that taking approval away from the DISCOs would create unnecessary hurdles, and the Private Power and Infrastructure Board asked NEPRA to keep consistency with the earlier regime for small systems. Small prosumers still needed NEPRA concurrence under regulation 4, which meant the DISCO had to forward the agreement, proof of fee and an affidavit to the regulator, and the regulator had up to seven working days to respond.

Within five working days of receiving an application, the DISCO must acknowledge it and say whether it is complete. Regulation 5 adds that approval of the interconnection "shall not be unreasonably withheld". The rule that matters most for the next phase of rooftop growth is a single proviso in regulation 3(5). The difficulty is that the rule is administered by the same company that decides whether an application is complete, technically feasible and approved. Nothing in the regulations obliges the DISCO to upgrade a transformer that has reached the ceiling, or to tell the applicant when headroom might return.

The DISCO can also limit or disconnect a facility at any time in the event of a fault, and on thirty days' written notice for maintenance, for non-compliance, or when the agreement ends or expires. The economic offer, in other words, is smaller than it was under net metering, and the administrative path is now shorter. Three changes would let the DISCO approval regime do what the amendment intends. The August amendment is a sensible correction to a February rule that put a national regulator in charge of approving three-kilowatt rooftops.