ISLAMABAD: The National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) has conditionally approved the Integrated System Plan (ISP) 2025, which envisages around $58 billion in investment in power generation and transmission over the next 11 years.
The regulator issued a 45-page decision on Friday. The decision also included more than 12 pages of dissenting and separate advisory notes from its three members, including the chairman.
Nepra raised concerns over the inclusion and exclusion of several major projects in the plan. It also questioned the decision to bypass the Council of Common Interests (CCI), which serves as the constitutional forum for national energy policy and planning.
The regulator approved the Revised Base/Recommended Case of the IGCEP-2025 and the revised Transmission System Expansion Plan (TSEP-2025), subject to addressing its observations.
The approved plan excludes battery energy storage systems (BESS) and the K-Electric transmission line planned for 2028.
ISP-2025 will replace the earlier Integrated Generation Capacity Expansion Plans (IGCEPs). The plan considers three electricity demand scenarios based on high, medium and low economic growth. The low-growth scenario serves as the business-as-usual (BAU) case.
The plan assumes GDP growth rates of 6.37%, 4.95% and 3.52% under the respective scenarios.
Under the low-growth BAU reference case, Pakistan will add 26,045 megawatts of generation capacity.
This includes 17,485MW of committed capacity and 8,560MW of optimised capacity. The plan also includes the retirement of 2,577MW of existing capacity, taking total installed capacity to 62,657MW.
The plan also accounts for 8,120MW of net-metering capacity. The projected cost of generation capacity additions stands at $47.08 billion.
The transmission plan includes $4.6 billion in ongoing and committed projects and another $6.05 billion in new transmission expansion. Total transmission investment will reach $10.65 billion over the plan period.
The investment will support power evacuation, network reinforcement, new extra-high-voltage substations, transformer augmentation and voltage control.
The plan also addresses electricity supply challenges in Gwadar and Makran after disruptions to power imports from Iran due to the Iran-US conflict. It allows the lateral entry of 40MW on-site generation plants in areas where extending the national grid remains technically or economically unfeasible.
ISMO had initially excluded K-Electric’s competitive renewable energy projects from the plan. However, the regulator later incorporated the 269MW JCM Wind-Solar Hybrid Project at Dhabeji for the current fiscal year.
Nepra also expressed concern over ISMO’s disclaimer regarding the integrity, accuracy, correctness, authenticity, and completeness of the data and projections used in the plan.
The regulator did not approve the proposed $900 million investment in BESS. It directed authorities to first conduct a comprehensive technical and economic study to determine the need, optimal capacity, operational use, and cost-effectiveness of the storage systems.
Nepra also noted conflicting positions from ISMO and PPMC over the impact of the ISP on consumer-end electricity tariffs. It directed authorities to quantify the tariff impact and include it in the main ISP report.
According to PPMC projections, the consumer-end base electricity tariff could rise to Rs. 37.28 per unit by 2035 from Rs. 34 per unit in 2024-25.
