I think the main point of this article is that none of this is happening in a centralized, coordinated fashion. This is mainly folks slapping solar on any building with a roof, with the government helping out a bit on the regulatory side.
It does eventually need to be coordinated to avoid grid issues, but given the massive increase in battery manufacturing (and cost decreases) battery deployment is likely to happen at a lightning pace over the next 3-4 years.
The article seems unrealistically favourable to Pakistan's government eg:
>Pakistan’s energy transformation didn’t happen in a vacuum—it’s part of a broader pivot toward climate consciousness that has taken root in both policy and politics...
whereas in reality solar's taken off because the government is incompetent at providing electricity so people get their own panels. From wikipedia:
>Following 2022 dearth of imported LNG in Pakistan, the country indicated it would quadruple its coal power plants, which use domestic coal
Doesn't sound very "pivot toward climate consciousness" to me.
Generation and storage definitely should go hand in hand, but I think the Pakistani authorities' desire is simply to have something better than the alternative of not having it. At least Pakistan has plenty of hydropower installations that could potentially be adapted to act as energy storage.
Either local solar panels, grid power, or a combination of both, yes. And of course solar panels can also indirectly "store" power by simply reducing demand on hydro resources during the day, allowing water to back up for night-time use.
It does eventually need to be coordinated to avoid grid issues, but given the massive increase in battery manufacturing (and cost decreases) battery deployment is likely to happen at a lightning pace over the next 3-4 years.