Want to go solar? Here’s what you should know

Eventually, we’re all going to have to rely on the sun. That much is an unfortunate (or fortunate depending on how you look at it) fact. Pakistan has continued to lag behind in electricity production over the decades with coal, oil, and hydel production all failing to effectively meet demand. And if the infrastructural problems were not enough - there are the environmental realities that make our reliance on the sun inevitable. 

In such a situation, while commercial use might be a little far, a lot of domestic users in the country have already become early adopters of solar technology. Seeing homes, mosques, small businesses, parks, and street lights powered by solar panels is a common enough sight all over the country. Surprisingly the technology has even permeated in lower-income neighbourhoods as well as smaller cities. 

And why would it not? With electricity a growing cost, the unit economics of going solar more than make sense. There is very much a future, in fact, where middle and upper-middle class households should be powered by solar energy to the extent that they also have cheaply available electric cars that they can fuel through the sun and run completely off the grid. Energy from the sun is being wasted until we use it.