If you are in Faisalabad, Jhang, Sargodha or any of the other five districts FESCO serves, the hardest part of going solar is no longer the equipment. It is working out which set of rules your application will actually be judged against. Right now there are three documents in circulation and they do not agree with each other.
This guide sets out what FESCO publishes, what the regulations in force actually say, and what NEPRA has recently ruled in a complaint against FESCO itself. All of it is from primary documents, and every one is linked or named so you can check it.
Which districts FESCO covers in central Punjab
FESCO is the distribution company for eight districts of central and north-western Punjab: Faisalabad, Sargodha, Mianwali, Khushab, Jhang, Bhakkar, Toba Tek Singh and Chiniot. It was set up in 1998 in the power sector restructuring and serves roughly 5.3 million customers.
That covers a lot of towns people assume are too small to be on anyone’s map. Pir Mahal and Gojra and Kamalia sit in Toba Tek Singh district, so they are FESCO. Ahmedpur Sial and Shorkot sit in Jhang district, so they are FESCO too. Bhalwal, Kot Momin and Silanwali are FESCO through Sargodha; Piplan and Isa Khel through Mianwali. If your bill says FESCO at the top, this page is about your application, whatever the size of your town.
Your neighbours in Multan or Bahawalpur are on a different company with its own checklist, which we cover in the MEPCO net metering guide. Lahore and its districts are LESCO, which runs a separate application process again, and our Lahore page covers that side.
What changed for FESCO net metering on 9 February 2026
On 9 February 2026, NEPRA notified the Prosumer Regulations 2026 (S.R.O. 251(I)/2026). They came into force at once, and regulation 21(1) repealed the 2015 Distributed Generation and Net Metering Regulations that everything before that date was built on.
The change that matters to your payback is in regulation 14. Under the old arrangement, a unit you exported offset a unit you later imported, so an exported unit was worth whatever the tariff was. Under net billing, the two sides are priced separately:
- Units FESCO supplies to you are billed at the applicable tariff, the normal rate on your bill.
- Units you supply to FESCO are bought at the national average energy purchase price, currently around Rs 11 a unit.
If your exports are worth more than your imports in a billing cycle, regulation 14(2) says the balance is credited to your next cycle or paid to you quarterly. The Authority can also revise the export rate by notification while your agreement is running, and regulation 14(3) says a revised rate is deemed to be part of your agreement.
The practical consequence is one sentence long, and it governs how you should size a system in 2026: a unit you generate and use yourself saves roughly Rs 55 to 65, while a unit you export earns about Rs 11. Self-consumption is now worth about five times as much as export. Design for your daytime load first.
The FESCO capacity rule: three documents, three answers
This is the section worth reading twice, because it is the mistake that sends a FESCO application back.
- FESCO’s own published checklist says nothing at all about sanctioned load. It sets a ceiling of 1000 kW and requires a three-phase meter, and that is the whole of its capacity guidance. The file carries no printed date, but its document properties show it was written on 26 March 2018 and it was uploaded in February 2024. It therefore predates both the 2026 regulations and the 2015-era amendments that introduced the sanctioned-load test.
- NEPRA’s most recent published decision in a FESCO net metering complaint, dated 10 November 2025, applies the old rule: capacity shall not exceed one and a half times the sanctioned load.
- The regulations actually in force say something stricter. Regulation 3(2) of the 2026 Prosumer Regulations reads: “The capacity of a proposed distributed generation facility shall not exceed the sanctioned load of the applicant’s premises.” No multiple. One times.
So an installer quoting you from FESCO’s website has no capacity rule to quote, an installer quoting the most recent FESCO case law will tell you 1.5 times, and the regulation in force says 1.0 times. On a 10 kW sanctioned load that is the difference between a 15 kW system and a 10 kW one, which is a six-figure difference in what you spend.
What to do about it: take the sanctioned load printed on your own FESCO bill as your working limit, and ask your sub-division to confirm in writing the figure they are applying today, before you order panels. A written answer from the office that will process your file is worth more than any published document, including this one. Note also that regulation 3(2) has a proviso letting the Authority revise the capacity rule by notification at any time, so it can move again.
Who can apply, and the single-phase trap
Regulation 2(1)(v) defines an applicant as a three-phase 400 V or 11 kV domestic, commercial, industrial, agricultural, general services or single point bulk supply consumer. FESCO’s own checklist says the same thing in plainer words: only consumers with three-phase meters installed are eligible. A single-phase connection has to be upgraded through the SDO office first, and that is a separate application with its own wait.
There is a second, less obvious trap, and it has been tested against FESCO specifically. In Complaint No. FESCO-NHQ-45989-10-24, decided on 10 November 2025, a consumer in Khayaban Garden Colony, Faisalabad, with a 5 kW sanctioned load applied for a 10 kW facility using an 8 kW single-phase hybrid inverter. FESCO rejected the application. The consumer took it to NEPRA, arguing that LESCO and IESCO had processed similar arrangements.
NEPRA’s Complaints Resolution Committee upheld FESCO on both counts. On capacity, the system had to be reconfigured. On the inverter, the committee reasoned that because the regulations define an applicant as a three-phase consumer, “prima facie, only balanced 3 phase inverters can be installed”, to avoid unbalanced penetration of single-phase generators into the distribution system. Its conclusion was explicit: FESCO “has right to reject the application due to any technical constraints and may ask the applicant to install three phase inverter as per its requirement”.
Read that as settled for now. If you are on FESCO and planning a hybrid system or an on-grid system, specify a three-phase inverter, even where a single-phase unit would carry the load and cost less. The saving is not worth a rejected file and a second round.
Documents FESCO asks for with a net metering application
FESCO’s checklist runs to thirteen items. Seven of them are the standard NEPRA schedules, which your installer prepares:
- Schedule-I, the interconnection agreement between you and FESCO
- Schedule-II, the standard distributed generation application form
- Schedule-III, the NEPRA licence application
- Schedule-IV, the application for exemption from section 24 of the Act
- Schedule-V, the fee schedule
- Schedule-VI, an affidavit on non-judicial paper
- Schedule-VII, the generation licence template
The remaining six are yours and your installer’s to assemble:
- An attested copy of your CNIC
- A copy of the last paid electricity bill, and FESCO states the applicant’s name and the name on the bill must be the same
- Technical data for the components, meaning the solar modules and inverters
- Schematic drawings and a single line diagram of the system
- A site plan showing the location of the external disconnect switch
- An inspection certificate from an approved installer
Two of FESCO’s three closing notes are worth repeating because they are design decisions, not paperwork: the inverters must be grid-tied type, and the maximum capacity for the facility is 1000 kW. Under the 2026 regulations the inverter also has to comply with the UL 1741 standard (regulation 9(5)), and a facility of 250 kW or above needs a load flow study carried out through FESCO or a consultant registered with the Pakistan Engineering Council (regulation 3(3)).
The name-matching requirement is the one that quietly costs people the most time. If the bill is still in a late parent’s name, or in the name of whoever owned the house before you, sort that out at the sub-division before anything else happens. It is a separate process and nothing in the solar application can proceed around it.
Where a FESCO application goes: Faisalabad head office or your SDO
The file goes to FESCO, not to NEPRA. Smaller domestic connections are handled at sub-division level by your SDO; larger commercial and industrial loads are sanctioned higher up, at XEN, SE or Chief Engineer level depending on the load, and the file follows the officer who can sanction it.
FESCO’s head office is at Abdullah Pur, Canal Bank Road, Faisalabad, which is the address NEPRA uses for the Chief Executive Officer, the GM (Commercial & Customer Services) and the Director Customer Services. If an application stalls and the sub-division will not move it, those are the offices above it.
If it stalls after that, NEPRA has a regional office in Faisalabad, at 1st floor, Plaza No. C-6B, College Hockey Stadium Road, Koh-i-Noor City. The complaint route is real and it works: the November 2025 decision described above went through that process from start to finish, and NEPRA heard it twice before deciding. It went against the consumer, but it was heard.
The FESCO net metering timetable the regulations give you
Most people filing a FESCO application have no idea that the clock is written down. It is, in regulation 3 of the 2026 regulations, and every step has a number attached. Working days, not calendar days:
- FESCO must give you its documents free of cost within 2 working days of your request
- It must acknowledge your application and tell you whether it is complete within 5 working days
- You supply anything missing within 3 working days of being told
- The initial review must be completed within 15 working days
- If the facility is not technically feasible, FESCO must return the application with reasons within 3 working days of finishing that review
- If it is satisfied, the agreement is signed within 7 working days
- The connection charge estimate follows within 7 working days of the agreement
- You pay it within 7 working days
- FESCO installs and commissions the interconnection within 15 working days of that payment
Add it up and a clean application is a little over two months of working days from filing to commissioning, excluding the NEPRA concurrence step. Reality is usually slower. But a deadline you can cite by regulation number is a different conversation at the counter than a general complaint about delay, and that is the point of knowing them.
The 80% transformer rule almost nobody mentions
Buried in a proviso to regulation 3(5) is a rule that can stop an otherwise perfect application: FESCO shall not entertain any application if the distributed generation capacity already connected to that distribution transformer has reached 80% of its rated capacity.
This has nothing to do with your house, your paperwork or your load. It depends on how many of your neighbours have already gone solar on the same transformer. In the streets of Faisalabad and Sargodha where solar has spread fastest, this is a live constraint, and it rewards asking early rather than waiting.
There is no public register of transformer saturation, so the only way to find out is to ask your sub-division about the transformer feeding your premises before you commit to equipment. It is a two-minute question that can save a wasted file. The same rule applies on every DISCO, including net metering nationally.
Do you need NEPRA concurrence?
Under S.R.O. 1320(I)/2026, a facility of 25 kW or below no longer needs NEPRA concurrence. FESCO approves it directly. That covers nearly every home system and a good many small commercial ones, and it removes a step that used to add weeks.
Above 25 kW the concurrence step stays. Regulation 4(3) allows NEPRA seven working days from receipt of the required documents, though in practice the gap is longer: on the FESCO concurrence issued on 1 July 2026 for a 170.17 kW facility at a WASA site in Faisalabad, FESCO’s covering letter was dated 4 May 2026 and reached NEPRA on 19 May.
That document is also worth flagging for a different reason. Although regulation 21(1) repealed the 2015 regulations on 9 February 2026, the concurrence NEPRA granted on 1 July 2026 states that it is issued “pursuant to” the 2015 regulations, and that the beneficiary shall abide by them. We are reporting that as we found it, without guessing at the reason. The practical takeaway for you is simply this: read which regulations your own agreement and concurrence cite, because the term and the export rate differ between the two frameworks. The 2026 regulations set the agreement term at five years from commissioning; that concurrence was issued for seven.
One deadline FESCO applicants forget
Regulation 4(4) says that if you do not commence distributed generation within six months of concurrence being granted, you have to obtain a fresh concurrence. FESCO’s process is not the thing that trips people here. Waiting on a roof repair, a delayed shipment or a decision about whether to add more panels is.
There is a related one. Under regulation 4(1), any modification to the technical parameters of the facility requires a fresh concurrence before you make it, and regulation 5(1)(d) requires FESCO to run validation checks for unlawful extension of a facility. Adding panels later without going back through the process is not a grey area, and it is now something your DISCO is specifically obliged to look for. If you think you may expand, say so at design stage and size the sanctioned load accordingly.
What about FESCO net metering fees?
FESCO’s checklist includes Schedule-V, the fee schedule, as one of the thirteen items, but like MEPCO’s it is a form rather than a published price. Third-party figures circulating online contradict each other, and we are not going to add another guess to the pile. What is reasonably well established is a NEPRA licence fee in the order of Rs 1,000 per kW.
Separately, regulation 12(1) makes you responsible for all costs of the interconnection facility up to the interconnection point, including the metering installation. That is the bidirectional meter and the work to install it, and it is a real number that belongs in your budget from the start. Ask for it in writing as part of your quotation, broken out from the equipment, so you can see which part of the price is the system and which part is FESCO’s connection work. Our solar system price guide shows what the equipment side should look like.
Solar installation in Faisalabad and the FESCO districts
We have worked in FESCO territory for years. At a factory in Ahmed Pur Sial, in Jhang district, we installed a 50 kW on-grid system with a green meter in 2019, and in September 2026 returned to the same site to add a 15 kW hybrid system with 32 kWh of lithium battery storage, which carries the emergency and staff office load through load shedding. The client described both in their own words in a public Google review, which you can read on our Business Profile.
That second visit is the more useful example for anyone reading this in 2026. The 2019 system was sized for net metering, when every exported unit offset an imported one. The 2026 addition is a hybrid with storage, because under net billing a stored unit used on site is worth about five times what an exported unit earns. It is the same site, the same owner and the same roof, designed two different ways for two different regulatory regimes.
Beyond FESCO, most of our documented work is in Lahore, with projects in Multan, Muzaffargarh, Sheikhupura, Mardan and Gilgit-Baltistan, including a 300 kW school system and a 110 kW rice mill in Muzaffargarh.
What we do have is the part of this that travels. The schedules are the same national forms; the capacity rule, the timetable, the transformer limit and the concurrence threshold are set by NEPRA and apply identically in Jhang and in Lahore; and the single-phase inverter question that FESCO has been ruled on is a design decision we would make the same way anywhere. We have taken systems through 5,000-plus net metering approvals, and we install across Pakistan.
If you are in Faisalabad, Sargodha, Jhang, Toba Tek Singh, Chiniot, Khushab, Mianwali or Bhakkar and you want a straight answer about what your sanctioned load allows and what the file will cost, talk to us. We already work in Jhang district, and we install across Pakistan.
FESCO net metering: frequently asked questions
How big a solar system can I install on a FESCO connection?
The regulation in force says the capacity shall not exceed the sanctioned load on your bill. FESCO’s own published checklist gives no sanctioned-load rule at all and only sets a 1000 kW ceiling, and NEPRA’s most recent FESCO decision applies the older one-and-a-half-times rule. Size against your sanctioned load and get your sub-division’s current figure in writing before you order.
Do I need a three-phase connection for net metering in Faisalabad?
Yes. Both FESCO’s checklist and the 2026 regulations restrict it to three-phase 400 V or 11 kV consumers. A single-phase connection must be upgraded through the SDO office first, as a separate application.
Can I use a single-phase hybrid inverter on a FESCO net metering connection?
NEPRA ruled on exactly this in November 2025 and upheld FESCO’s refusal, reasoning that only balanced three-phase inverters should be installed and that FESCO may require a three-phase inverter. Specify three-phase.
How long should a FESCO net metering application take?
The 2026 regulations set every step: five working days to acknowledge, fifteen for the initial review, seven to sign the agreement, seven for the connection charge estimate, seven to pay it and fifteen to install and commission. That is a little over two months of working days for a clean file, before any NEPRA concurrence.
Why was my application refused when my paperwork was complete?
Three reasons account for most refusals, and all three are checkable in advance: the name on the bill does not match the applicant, the connection is single-phase, or the capacity exceeds what your sanctioned load allows. A fourth is outside your control, which is the rule that FESCO cannot accept an application once distributed generation on your distribution transformer reaches 80% of its rated capacity.
Is it still called net metering in FESCO?
The application is still filed as a distributed generation and net metering application and FESCO’s forms still use that name. The settlement for new applications since 9 February 2026 is net billing, which pays about Rs 11 for an exported unit.
Does SNM Solutions work in Faisalabad and the FESCO districts?
Yes. At a factory in Ahmed Pur Sial, Jhang district, we installed a 50 kW on-grid system with a green meter in 2019 and added a 15 kW hybrid with 32 kWh of lithium storage in September 2026. We install across Pakistan and have taken more than 5,000 net metering applications through to approval.
FESCO net metering: Roman Urdu mein aam sawalat
FESCO connection par kitna bara system laga sakte hain?
Jo qanoon abhi nafiz hai woh kehta hai ke system ki capacity aap ke bill par likhe sanctioned load se zyada nahin honi chahiye. FESCO ke apne checklist mein sanctioned load ka koi zikr hi nahin, sirf 1000 kW ki had likhi hai, aur NEPRA ke naye tareen FESCO faisle mein purana 1.5 guna wala usool istemal hua hai. Is liye sanctioned load ko hi paimana banayein aur order se pehle apne sub-division se mojooda had tehreeri tor par confirm karwa lein.
Kya three phase connection zaroori hai?
Ji haan. FESCO aur 2026 ke qawaneen dono sirf three phase 400 V ya 11 kV sarifeen ko ahl qarar dete hain. Single phase hai to pehle SDO office se upgrade karwana parega, jo alag darkhwast hai.
Single phase hybrid inverter chal jayega?
Nahin. November 2025 mein NEPRA ne isi masle par FESCO ke haq mein faisla diya tha ke sirf balanced three phase inverter lagna chahiye aur FESCO three phase inverter ka mutalba kar sakta hai. Is liye three phase inverter hi specify karwayein.
Darkhwast kitna waqt leti hai?
Qawaneen mein har qadam ka waqt likha hai: paanch kaam ke din acknowledgement, pandrah din initial review, saat din agreement, saat din connection charge estimate, saat din adaigi aur pandrah din installation. Saaf file ho to do mahine se thora zyada, NEPRA concurrence se pehle.