In a quiet Rawalpindi neighbourhood, where the power grid often dictates the rhythm of life, one family has transitioned from stopgap solutions to a more sun-powered reality. Their journey into solar energy was not just a financial calculation, but a response to a two-decade fight with an unreliable power supply.

“It was one hour off and one hour on,” recalls Rubab, a 40-year-old housewife and resident of the Marir Hassan neighbourhood. After struggling with frail UPS batteries for years, she finally invested in solar panels about a year and a half ago — at a high personal cost.

“I sold my gold to buy these solar panels for our home,” she tells Dawn. “Women are expected to make these sacrifices for the household. Even my sister had to install solar on installments, that is the only way families like ours can afford it.”

The decision to shift to solar, she recounts, was both hers and her husband’s, influenced by relatives who had already made the transition. Their purchase, however, was isolated from their understanding of the technical system they had scrambled to secure.

Rubab, who manages home appliances all day, is a primary energy user in her household. Yet she remains physically and intellectually distant from the hardware and its specifications.

“I have never been a part of any interaction with the technicians since we got solar for our home. All the interactions are done by my husband. The male members in our family do not like us indulging in such issues; these are thought to be male-centric matters,” she shares.

This exclusion is particularly striking because Rubab is, in practice, the household’s most sophisticated energy manager. She has learned to read the weather and adjust consumption accordingly.

“All I know is that when there is plenty of sunlight, I can use the appliances properly,” she explains. “If it is cloudy outside, I instantly shut the fridge and TV, and do not let my kids switch them on that day.”

Despite navigating solar power through daily practice, Rubab barely knows how to wash the solar plates or take care of the equipment, often waiting for her husband to return home to deal with technical issues.

Pakistan is currently undergoing a rapid shift toward household solar use, driven by tariff hikes and persistent outages. According to a recent study by the Policy Research Institute for Equitable Development (PRIED), roughly 50 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels have been imported from China in the last five years, with about 33 GW of capacity already installed across the country.

The residential sector alone accounts for about 16.66 GW of this capacity, making homes the largest contributors yet to solar use in the country.

The data is staggering: 77 per cent of solar adopters predominantly rely on solar for their consumption, with the grid as a supplement. This transition is reshaping how families secure electricity, but it is doing so in a way that risks leaving out nearly half the population.

Unfortunately, like Rubab, many women have had to watch the solar revolution from the sidelines, for which they have made their share — or often more — of the sacrifices.

Zahida, a 57-year-old retired government teacher and resident of Rawalpindi’s PWD Housing Society, recalls how she was never a partner in the........

© Dawn Prism