Session 2 - Track B: Rewiring Market & Regulatory Reforms to Enable Flexibility + Plenary
Pakistan’s rapid, citizen-led solar expansion has become one of the most significant bottom-up shifts in the country’s power sector. With more than 50 GW of solar panels imported over the last five years, rooftop and behind-the-meter solar has grown far beyond earlier planning assumptions. While this has accelerated renewable energy adoption, it has also exposed critical gaps in Pakistan’s power system architecture, particularly around flexibility, storage, system operations, and the regulatory frameworks needed to coordinate distributed energy resources as reliable grid assets.
This session will examine the market and regulatory reforms needed to make flexibility visible, dispatchable, and compensable within Pakistan’s power system. It will bring together regulators, market operators, utilities, and international specialists to identify practical pathways for enabling both system-level and consumer-driven flexibility.
The discussion will examine the mechanisms required for each level and identify the institutional, commercial, and technical foundations needed to support them.
The session dives through 2 key thematic areas as follows:
2:05 – 3:00 PM: Thematic Area 1: System-Level Flexibility and Need for Ancillary Services
3:00 – 3:55 PM: Thematic Area 2: Consumer-driven flexibility: DSM, DER Aggregation, BTM storage
Session Outcomes:
A shared understanding of Pakistan’s emerging grid challenges and the need for both system-level and consumer-driven flexibility to support reliable power-system operation.
Identification of priority reforms needed to define, procure, and compensate ancillary services within Pakistan’s market and regulatory frameworks.
Identification of the storage, renewable-plus-BESS, demand-response, and VPP models best suited to Pakistan, along with the commercial and contractual conditions required for their participation.
A set of relevant international lessons and coordinated reform pathways for enabling ancillary services, demand-side resources, and responsive tariffs, while recognising their distinct requirements.
Start: 04/08/2026, 02:00:00
End: 04/08/2026, 4:00:00