Pakistan Island Energy Storage Power Generation

The combination of a glut of lithium, a key battery material, and overcapacity of lower-tier China-made batteries has created a flood of cut-price battery energy storage systems for lower-income countries such as Pakistan.

The battery storage systems are still too expensive to be adopted as widely as solar has been in Pakistan in the near future. But distributors say prices are falling rapidly and demand continues to grow.

Pakistan's power minister Awais Leghari told the Financial Times that the government was working to create a more competitive electricity market and find other ways to sustain power cost reductions. “I can't stop the evolution of technology,” he said. “Competition is a very healthy way to bring about efficiencies in the entire system.”

Faaz Diwan, director at Karachi-based Diwan International, one of Pakistan's largest solar and battery distributors, said the cost of the BYD batteries he sold had fallen by more than a third since last year to about Rs275,000 for a 5kWh unit that is enough to power a small house.

The battery storage system will help factories to more cheaply extend their operations beyond daylight hours and scale back the use of fossil fuels, compensating for reliability issues from the grid's renewable sources.

Households that can afford solar panels are switching off. Since 2015, Pakistan has drawn in billions of dollars' worth of sovereign-backed loans to finance new power plants and signed long-term liquefied natural gas deals with QatarEnergy and Italy's Eni.