By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The government is drafting rules for a virtual power grid that would let households and businesses generate and store their own electricity, part of a broader push to modernise a distribution network that Energy Minister Awais Leghari acknowledged is being undermined by theft and staff corruption.
Leghari told reporters in Islamabad on Wednesday that regulations for the new system would be finalised by the end of the current fiscal year, which runs through June. Power distribution companies have already been instructed to install grid-connected batteries to support the shift.
“A battery revolution is coming to Pakistan as the government seeks to promote battery use and introduce a virtual grid system,” Leghari said, adding that expanding battery storage capacity across the network is now a government priority.
The remarks capped a bruising session before the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Power, chaired by Muhammad Idrees, where Leghari faced sustained questioning over rolling blackouts that have persisted across the country. The minister told lawmakers that roughly 3,500 of Pakistan’s approximately 14,500 electricity feeders are currently subject to load-shedding, attributing the outages to theft and line losses rather than a shortage of generation capacity.
Distribution companies are cutting power far more extensively than they are formally authorised to, Leghari said, describing a system so degraded that fixing it would cost between 600 million and 1 billion rupees per constituency. He put the total investment needed to overhaul the distribution network at roughly 200 billion rupees, which he said would be recovered from consumers over 25 years without imposing a significant additional burden.
“We need Rs600 million to Rs1 billion in every constituency to fix the electricity system,” he said, adding that a comprehensive investment program has been ordered for distribution companies and that adequate capital had not previously been directed toward the system.
Bribery Distorts Demand Data
In one of the session’s more pointed disclosures, Leghari said manipulation of sanctioned electricity loads — the official demand figures recorded for individual consumers — is contributing directly to network overloads. He alleged that some consumers arrange with linemen and sub-divisional officers to understate their load requirements in official notices, in exchange for bribes.
“Electricity staff take bribes and even eat chickens to get the load written lower, which is ruining the system,” Leghari said. He said the practice leaves infrastructure sized for artificially low demand figures, pushing the network beyond its designed capacity when actual consumption is higher.
To curb the damage from theft without penalizing paying customers, the government plans to shift outages from the feeder level to the transformer level within the next year, Leghari said. Under the revised approach, power would be cut only at transformers where theft is detected, rather than disconnecting an entire feeder and the paying customers on it. An on-off control system is being rolled out across roughly 190,000 transformers to support the change, he said, calling the approach one already used internationally. Leghari said the regulatory framework underpinning the new system is expected to be ready by April or May of next year.
He rejected the suggestion that outages reflect an active shortfall in supply. “The outages are mainly occurring due to faults caused by overloading of the power system,” he said, adding that further investment — subject to approval from the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority — would be needed to bring the system up to standard.
Gas Costs Drive Peak-Hour Cuts
Leghari also linked recent load-shedding to a sharp rise in the cost of imported gas, telling the committee that disruption in the Strait of Hormuz has constrained the Petroleum Division’s ability to secure LNG cargoes, pushing the government to rely more heavily on domestically produced gas for power generation.
He said a gas cargo that previously cost around $30 million is now running upward of $95 million, prompting the government to scale back gas-fired generation during peak evening hours to contain fuel costs. “Who will bear an additional electricity bill of Rs6 to Rs6.50 per unit?” he asked the committee, framing the peak-hour cuts as a trade-off against steeper bills.
Leghari denied that the government has signed any new agreements with independent power producers, telling the committee that media reports to the contrary were inaccurate. He said the broader shift toward batteries — accelerated in part by changes to the country’s net-metering rules — would ease pressure on the national grid by encouraging consumers to shift usage toward nighttime hours, and that distribution companies had been told to facilitate battery installations for that purpose. He added that the government has also taken steps to prevent costs tied to a small subset of consumers from being passed on to the broader customer base.
Lawmakers Push Back
The briefing drew sharp exchanges with committee members. Rana Muhammad Hayat, a lawmaker from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, told Leghari that despite extensive discussion of reforms, electricity prices had not fallen and that outages were straining lawmakers’ standing with constituents.
“There is so much load-shedding that it has become difficult for us to go among the people,” Hayat said, adding that while distribution companies bear operational blame, responsibility ultimately rests with policymakers. “What can the Discos do, minister sahab? You switch off the electricity,” he said.
Hayat went further, suggesting the government’s energy policies appear oriented more toward satisfying conditions set by the International Monetary Fund than addressing public grievances. “Yes, I feel like we are working not for the country but only for the IMF,” he said.
Leghari pushed back sharply, telling Hayat he was making an unsubstantiated claim in a formal legislative setting and challenging him to produce evidence that electricity had become more expensive. “You are making irresponsible statements before a responsible forum,” the minister said.
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