A farmer in Dasht found his backup plan in the sun
In Dasht, a remote village in southern Balochistan, Karim Baksh bends over a narrow water channel and steers the flow by hand toward a row of ripening watermelons. It is the kind of practical work that looks simple until diesel prices, power shortages and geopolitics decide otherwise.
For years, Baksh’s crops depended on a diesel pump that pulled groundwater up for irrigation. Then Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 sent fuel prices climbing. Diesel became expensive enough to turn a routine task into a constant calculation.
“It became impossible for me to run the pump on diesel daily,” he said.
With less water, the watermelon harvest suffered. Some seasons, he planted less land. The logic was basic and brutal: no water, no crop. No crop, no income.
In 2023, he made a move that looked risky at the time. He borrowed 300,000 Pakistani rupees, about $1,075, from relatives and friends and installed solar panels beside his field.
Three years later, that bet looks a lot less like a gamble and a lot more like common sense with better lighting.
As the US-Israel war on Iran rattles global energy markets and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, energy prices have surged worldwide. That strait normally carries around 20 percent of global oil and gas in peacetime. Not exactly the sort of thing a melon farmer in Balochistan can ignore, except that in his case, he mostly can.
Under Dasht’s brutal summer heat, where temperatures can reach 51 degrees Celsius, or 124 degrees Fahrenheit, his pump now runs without diesel. His watermelons keep getting irrigated, no drama required.
“Now, I don’t care if the prices of diesel increase,” he said, pointing upward toward the sun as if the climate were a business partner. “As long as there is this sun, I can grow my watermelons.”
Pakistan’s solar boom is acting as a cushion
Baksh’s experience captures something bigger than one farmer’s good timing. Pakistan has long been exposed to global energy shocks, and it still is. But it has also picked up an unexpected form of insulation from the rapid spread of solar power across rooftops, farms and businesses.
Pakistan’s energy system remains tightly linked to imported fuels and international shipping routes, especially the Strait of Hormuz. About 80 percent of the country’s oil imports pass through that narrow waterway between Iran and Oman, while 99 percent of its liquefied natural gas comes from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
A recent report by the Council on Foreign Relations warns that Pakistan could face severe energy stress if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed for months. The country has little storage capacity. If gas supplies to power plants and energy-hungry industries are disrupted, the effects could quickly spread into blackouts, factory shutdowns, strained public services, transport problems and household disruptions.
And yet, while the world watches tankers and shipping lanes, a quieter shift has been unfolding in Pakistan’s fields and neighborhoods.
Solar panels, once a niche add-on, have become a real part of the country’s energy mix. They are not a magic wand. They are, however, doing something unusually useful: reducing reliance on imported fuel at a moment when imported fuel is getting more expensive and more politically complicated by the week.
A study by Renewables First and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air says Pakistan’s rooftop solar boom has saved more than $12 billion in fuel imports since 2018. At current market prices, the savings this year alone would be about $6.3 billion.
That shift did not come from some master plan drafted in Islamabad. It came from millions of individual decisions by farmers, households and businesses trying to get reliable power without waiting for the grid to cooperate.
According to EMBER, an independent think tank, solar’s share in Pakistan’s energy mix rose from 2.9 percent in 2020 to 32.3 percent in 2025. That is not a small adjustment. That is a national energy rewrite done in installments.
Rabia Babar, an energy data manager at Renewables First, says the result is not just cleaner power but a little more breathing room when international shocks hit.
“Pakistan’s solar revolution wasn’t planned in Islamabad, it was built on rooftops,” she said. “As tensions around the Strait of Hormuz remain high, those panels are proving to be one of the country’s most effective energy security strategies.”
A boom that works best for people who can afford the first step
In cities such as Lahore and Karachi, rooftop solar panels are increasingly hard to miss. For middle-class families, the math is straightforward. The upfront cost is painful, but electricity from the panels is effectively free once the system is installed, and the investment can often be recovered within a few years.
There is also a bonus for those connected to the grid through net metering. When panels generate more power than a home or business needs, the extra electricity can be sent back to the national grid in exchange for credits.
The expansion has been rapid. A 2023 Gallup Pakistan survey found that roughly 15 percent of households, or about 4 million homes, were already using solar panels in some form. By 2025, a Pakistan Bureau of Statistics household survey showed that figure had climbed to 25 percent.
Government data also show that more than 280,000 consumers now use net metering, and the number is rising sharply each year.
But the benefits are not spread evenly, because of course they are not.
Analysts say the people most able to take advantage of solar are upper-middle-class and upper-class Pakistanis. The upfront cost of installing a system can run from several hundred thousand rupees to well over a million, depending on size and battery storage. That is not a casual purchase for poorer households.
Once the panels are in place, the electricity bills can fall dramatically. Commercial and industrial users have been especially eager to install solar because it protects them from outages as well as high prices. For export-oriented businesses, lower power costs can also improve competitiveness abroad.
Farmers in Balochistan and Punjab who use solar-powered tube wells now get steadier irrigation and avoid diesel price swings. In rural areas where electricity is unreliable, solar has become less of a green lifestyle choice and more of a survival tool.
Still, many poorer urban and rural households risk being left on the wrong side of the transition.
There is also a less cheerful piece of the accounting. Net-metering users consume grid electricity at night or when the sun is not shining, but they do not pay many of the fixed costs that keep the power system running. That means non-solar users, including many lower-income Pakistanis, end up helping cover some of the cost.
Reports suggest that net metering has already shifted about 159 billion rupees, or $570 million, in financial burden onto grid consumers. And that figure could rise.
The result, experts warn, is a two-tier energy system: one for those with panels, batteries and spare capital, and another for everyone else.
China is powering the boom, for better and for worse
Most of Pakistan’s solar panels are imported from China, which dominates the global solar supply chain. According to the International Energy Agency, China controls about 80 percent of that market and produces much of the world’s solar wafers, cells and panels.
Chinese lithium-ion batteries are also entering Pakistan in growing numbers. These batteries let users store daytime electricity for use at night, reducing dependence on the grid even further. As battery prices fall, more households are pairing panels with storage.
The pace is striking. In 2018, solar imports from China produced less than 1GW in Pakistan. By early 2026, that figure had climbed to 51GW, making Pakistan one of the fastest-growing solar markets in the world.
“Pakistan’s solar boom isn’t the story of Pakistan. It is also a China story,” said an electrical engineer at the University of Turbat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. “These cheap Chinese solar panels are changing the renewable energy sector around the developing countries.”
The drop in prices has been dramatic. In the early 2010s, solar panels in Pakistan cost between 100 rupees, or $0.35, and 120 rupees, or $0.42, per watt. Today, they cost about 30 rupees, or $0.10, per watt.
A 3KW home solar system typically costs around 450,000 rupees, or $1,610. Larger commercial systems can cost up to 2.2 million rupees, or $7,874.
That lower price arrived at a very convenient moment. Pakistan was already dealing with power shortages, rising tariffs and the oil price shock that followed the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war. Solar suddenly looked less like a luxury and more like the least expensive way to avoid being at the mercy of the grid.
Falling battery prices have helped too. The IEA says lithium-ion battery prices dropped by 20 percent in 2024 alone, making it easier for households to store electricity for nighttime use.
But there is a catch. The University of Turbat engineer said Pakistan may be reducing dependence on imported fuel only to replace it with a new dependency.
“Without manufacturing solar panels itself, Pakistan is falling into a new form of dependency, this time on imported technology rather than imported fuel,” he said.
Islamabad helped start it, then got nervous about the bill
The Pakistani government has not exactly maintained a straight face on solar policy.
It introduced a net-metering policy in 2015 to promote renewable energy and allow users to sell electricity back to the grid at about 25 rupees, or $0.090, per unit. It also removed some taxes on imported solar panels, which helped lower prices and speed adoption.
That combination pushed the market forward quickly. Later, though, officials became more concerned about the impact on the already fragile power sector. Recently, the government lowered the buyback rate for new net-metering users to about 10 rupees, or $0.036, per unit.
For farmers like Baksh, the policy debate matters less than the fact that his pump runs.
Back in Dasht, he loads watermelons onto pickup trucks and lorries headed to markets in Turbat and Gwadar. Transport remains uncertain because fuel prices still move around like they have somewhere better to be.
Even so, one part of his operation is now stable. It does not depend on global shipping lanes, war risk or the mood of oil markets.
He hopes to buy more solar panels, grow more watermelons next season and eventually send his crop to bigger markets in Quetta and Karachi, both farther away and more ambitious than the local trade he manages now.
For him, at least, the lesson is simple.
“The water keeps flowing no matter what,” he said.
