By Azam Tariq

Pakistan’s rapidly expanding rooftop solar and battery base is opening the door to “swarm electrification,” a model under which millions of privately owned energy assets could be coordinated to lower consumer costs, improve grid flexibility and support local electricity markets, experts say.

The concept is relatively simple. Instead of each rooftop solar system and battery operating independently, digital platforms connect groups of consumers so that surplus electricity can be stored, shared or traded locally. At a larger scale, these assets can be aggregated through a virtual power plant (VPP) and respond collectively when the national grid needs electricity or flexibility.

The model is gaining relevance as Pakistan’s distributed-energy base expands. Pakistan Solar Association analysis estimates distributed solar supplied close to 27% of the country’s electricity in FY2025, including about 51 terawatt-hours of generation largely invisible in grid-side data.

Storage is expanding alongside solar. Renewables First estimates that lithium-ion battery energy-storage imports reached around 4.6 gigawatt-hours in calendar year 2025, up 220% year on year, suggesting consumers are increasingly moving from simply generating daytime solar electricity to storing and managing it.

The economic question is therefore how these privately financed assets can create value beyond individual households.

A recent assessment by the Policy Research Institute for Equitable Development (PRIED) found swarm-grid arrangements technically feasible in both urban and rural settings, although their economics differed between the two.

Experts said the opportunity lay in converting scattered generation and storage into a coordinated resource rather than simply adding more solar capacity.

Speaking to Wealth Pakistan, Syed Faizan Shah, Energy Adviser at the Power Division, said Pakistan could move from millions of individual distributed energy resources towards coordinated systems in which rooftop solar, batteries, electric vehicles and flexible electricity loads are aggregated through VPPs.

He said such coordination could allow distributed assets to function as a single intelligent source of power, creating greater value from investments consumers had already made while enabling households and businesses to participate more actively in the electricity system.

The challenge, however, extends beyond connecting equipment.

Muhammad Zakria, Executive Director for System Operations at the Independent System and Market Operator (ISMO), told Wealth Pakistan that distributed energy resources could provide significant flexibility to the power system, but their effective integration required appropriate regulatory and technological foundations.

Real-time visibility, reliable forecasting, communication and control systems, together with appropriate grid standards, would be necessary to ensure that distributed resources could respond to system requirements without compromising grid security, he said.

The economics are particularly different outside major urban centres.

Ahsan Gaylani of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) told Wealth Pakistan that electricity in rural and marginalised communities was closely linked with economic activity and livelihoods, making affordability and reliability central to any decentralised model.

He said financing structures should bring together communities, private investors and development finance institutions or banks. Blended finance, concessional funding and government-backed de-risking instruments could help overcome the high initial costs that might otherwise prevent viable projects from proceeding.

International experience shows that aggregation can move beyond experimentation. South Australia has developed Australia’s largest VPP, linking thousands of household solar and battery systems so they can operate collectively. More than 7,000 public-housing tenants are already benefiting, according to the South Australian government.

The system has also provided grid-stability services during power-station trips, interconnector outages and other network disturbances, demonstrating how relatively small household batteries can collectively provide services traditionally associated with conventional power plants.

Experts said Pakistan’s solar transition was therefore entering a new phase in which greater value could come not only from installing additional panels, but also from developing the regulations, technology and financial incentives needed to coordinate existing solar systems, batteries and flexible demand into a broader power-system resource.

Credit: INP-WealthPk