Electricity consumers across Pakistan will pay an extra Rs1.11 per unit in their October bills after the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra) notified a fresh fuel cost adjustment (FCA) on Thursday, adding roughly Rs16 billion to the national power bill, according to Dawn and The Express Tribune.
The adjustment, worked out at Rs1.1086 per kWh, is tied to the actual cost of generating electricity in August 2026 and will show up in bills for units consumed and billed in October. It is well below the Rs1.73 per unit increase the Central Power Purchasing Agency (CPPA) had originally asked for — Nepra trimmed the request after reviewing the generation data. The regulator found that the actual average fuel charge for August worked out to Rs8.8265 per kWh against a reference cost of Rs7.0998 per kWh; after its own adjustments, Nepra settled the net fuel component at Rs8.2084 per kWh.
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| Approved FCA (October bills) | Rs1.11 / unit (Rs1.1086/kWh) |
| CPPA’s original request | Rs1.73 / unit |
| Billing period covered | August 2026 generation costs |
| Total consumer impact | ~Rs16 billion |
| Actual fuel cost (August) | Rs8.8265 / kWh |
| Reference fuel cost | Rs7.0998 / kWh |
| Net fuel component after adjustment | Rs8.2084 / kWh |
The increase applies to K-Electric and the ex-WAPDA distribution companies (XWDISCOs), including consumers on the incremental consumption package, after the federal government’s policy of applying uniform fuel charge adjustments across the country, per Dawn’s reporting. It does not apply to lifeline consumers, electric vehicle charging stations, or consumers on the prepaid tariff.
So why did August’s generation cost more than planned? Dawn’s reporting, drawing on Nepra’s own notification, points to a mix of a costlier fuel source and output shortfalls elsewhere in the system. RLNG-based generation worked out to Rs45.93 per unit — narrowly the most expensive source for the month, just ahead of furnace oil at Rs45.25 per unit (inclusive of the petroleum levy) — because Qatar’s RLNG supply was hit by a force majeure, pushing the national grid to buy costlier gas on the spot market. At the same time, two of the system’s cheaper sources underdelivered: hydropower generation came in just under 38% of the mix against a 41% target, and nuclear output fell to around 10% against an estimated 16.4%, after an outage at Karachi’s nuclear power plants. The shortfall had to be made up with imported coal, whose share of generation rose to 15.6% against a planned 7.4%, at roughly Rs17 per unit.
| Fuel source | Cost per unit (Rs) |
|---|---|
| RLNG | 45.93 |
| Furnace oil (incl. petroleum levy) | 45.25 |
| Imported coal | 17.00 |
| Local coal | 5.50 |
| Nuclear | 3.15 (vs Rs2.50 planned) |
| Hydropower | No fuel cost |
| Generation source | Actual share (Aug) | Target share |
|---|---|---|
| Hydropower | ~38% | 41% |
| Nuclear | ~10% | 16.4% |
| Imported coal | 15.6% | 7.4% |
Tribune’s report adds that the FCA was approved under provisions of the Nepra Act following recent legal amendments that let the regulator adjust tariffs for fuel charge variations, and that distribution companies and K-Electric are required to apply the adjustment in line with applicable court orders. This is not the first such hit to consumers this year — Nepra’s board recently approved a $58 billion, 11-year power sector plan despite internal objections, underscoring how often the regulator’s decisions are shaping household power bills this year.
Our Opinion
The monthly fuel cost adjustment is, on paper, just a technical pass-through of what it actually cost to keep the lights on — but for households already squeezed by a high cost of living, a surprise Rs1.11-per-unit addition every month or two functions less like routine accounting and more like a second, unpredictable tax; the deeper issue this particular adjustment exposes is Pakistan’s continuing exposure to a single disrupted gas cargo or a single plant outage, since it took both a Qatari force majeure and a Karachi nuclear outage happening in the same month to push costs this high, and until the generation mix is diversified and more resilient to exactly these kinds of single points of failure, consumers will keep absorbing the cost of planning gaps they had no part in creating.
