Sherry urges battery storage push to accelerate Pakistan’s solar transition

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Vice President Senator Sherry Rehman yesterday called for an accelerated shift towards battery storage, smart grids and distributed energy resources (DER), saying Pakistan's clean energy transition would remain incomplete without affordable financing, modern grid infrastructure and policy support for households and small businesses. Addressing the Solar Storage Flexibility Conference in Islamabad, Rehman said countries with reliable electricity would lead future economic growth, lamenting that unannounced power outages continued to disrupt education and economic activity, with students among the worst affected. She said millions of low-income households still lacked access to affordable and reliable energy despite Pakistan's vast renewable energy potential. "Our electricity demand is lower than our installed generation capacity. This is essentially a planning issue," she said, stressing the need for reforms in the power sector.