Uzbekistan says household solar under its net-metering scheme has reached 2,508 MW, and it pays more for an exported unit than most households pay to import one
This is not net metering, whatever it is called, and the difference is the story. Net metering is an accounting convention that makes a prosumer indifferent between consuming a unit and selling it, and bounds the utility’s exposure at the customer’s own consumption. Uzbekistan nets first and then pays cash above the retail rate on whatever is left, which converts a billing arrangement into a procurement programme with uncapped volume and a price fixed by decree. A household paying 650 soum to import and receiving 1,000 soum to export is not being asked to size a system to its load; it is being asked how much roof it has, which is why 2.5 GW of household-owned generation appeared in forty months in a country with a state-dominated power sector and essentially no rooftop industry before 2023. That is a rebuke to the standing argument in India and Pakistan that prosumer schemes must be intricate to survive, with banking windows, time-of-day restrictions and capacity caps tied to sanctioned load: the intricacy is not what drives adoption, simplicity and a generous price are. It is equally evidence for why the intricacy arrives later. An above-retail export price is a subsidy that grows with every megawatt installed, paid into a residential tariff already subsidised at the lower tiers and indexed upward by policy, and those two lines converge. The scheme has now built a prosumer constituency large enough to notice a change, and is adding to it at roughly 60 MW a month.
Uzbekistan says household solar under its net-metering scheme has reached 2,508 MW, and it pays more for an exported unit than most households pay to import one
Forty months, from close to nothing, under about the simplest scheme a state could write. The export price is the reason, and it is also the bill.
Uzbekistan's Ministry of Energy reports 2,508 MW of photovoltaic capacity deployed under its Solar House net-metering scheme between April 2023 and August 2026, according to pv magazine, which published the figures on 7 September 2026. Of that, 509.7 MW was added in the first eight months of 2026. On the current run-rate the government expects about 700 MW to be commissioned across the full year against an annual target of 400 MW, which would put the cumulative small-scale total near 2.7 GW by December. For scale, the same report cites IRENA's figure of 5.93 GW of cumulative installed PV capacity nationwide at the end of 2025.
The scheme has been running since April 2023. It covers household arrays up to 50 kW. Settlement is monthly and is calculated on the positive difference between what a household exports and what it imports, with payment made through a dedicated mobile application; a household whose exports exceed its consumption in a given month owes nothing for electricity that month. On the net surplus, the state pays a subsidy of UZS 1,000 per kilowatt-hour, which pv magazine converts to about $0.08.
Set that payment against what the same household pays to buy electricity. Under a Cabinet of Ministers decision taking effect on 1 June 2026, reported with the tier bands, general residential consumers pay 650 soum per kWh up to 200 kWh a month, 900 soum from 201 to 500 kWh, and 1,100 soum from 501 to 1,000 kWh. Households in multi-storey buildings and dormitories with electric stoves pay 325, 450 and 550 soum across the same three bands. Tariffs are now indexed once a year, capped at a 10 per cent rise, a policy Gazeta.uz reported as replacing an earlier intention to freeze them.
So for a typical household consuming under 500 kWh a month, a kilowatt-hour sent to the grid is worth more than a kilowatt-hour taken from it. For a flat with an electric stove, it is worth roughly two to three times as much. Only households drawing above 500 kWh a month pay an import price at or above what their exports earn.
Why it matters
This is not net metering, whatever it is called, and the difference is the whole story.
Net metering is an accounting convention: exports and imports cancel at the same price, so the prosumer is made indifferent between consuming a unit and selling it, and the utility's exposure is bounded by the customer's own consumption. Uzbekistan nets first and then pays cash above the retail rate on whatever is left over. That converts the scheme from a billing arrangement into a procurement programme with an uncapped volume and a price fixed by decree, and it explains both the deployment rate and the thing that will eventually end it. A household facing 650 soum to import and 1,000 soum to export is not being asked to size a system to its own load. It is being asked how much roof it has.
The deployment numbers are the point worth sitting with. Two and a half gigawatts of household-owned generation in about forty months, in a country of roughly 37 million with a state-dominated power sector and essentially no rooftop industry before 2023, is a faster distributed build than most of the markets this publication follows, and it was achieved with a design a regulator could fit on one page: a capacity ceiling, a flat export price, monthly netting, an app. There is a standing argument in India and Pakistan that prosumer schemes must be intricate to be financially survivable, with banking windows, time-of-day restrictions, capacity caps tied to sanctioned load and gross-versus-net distinctions. Uzbekistan is evidence that the intricacy is not what drives adoption. Simplicity and a generous price are.
It is equally evidence for the other half of that argument, which is why the intricacy tends to arrive later. A flat above-retail export price is a subsidy whose cost grows with every megawatt installed, and it is being paid into a residential tariff structure that is itself subsidised at the lower tiers and indexed upward by policy. Those two lines converge. Either the state absorbs a growing cash cost, or the export price is cut, or the annual tariff indexation raises the import side until the premium closes on its own. The schemes that unwound in Pakistan and are being renegotiated across Indian states all began at a comparable point, and the political difficulty of the second move is exactly proportional to the success of the first. Uzbekistan has now built a constituency of prosumers large enough to notice a change and is adding to it at roughly 60 MW a month.
The question to ask of this scheme is therefore not whether it works. It plainly works. It is what the UZS 1,000 costs the budget annually, who pays it, and at what level of penetration the distribution utility starts asking for it back. None of those figures is public in what was checked here, which is itself informative.
What is still unknown
Everything reported about the scheme's scale comes from one trade publication's account of a ministry statement. The ministry's own release was not reached, its date is not established, and it is not clear whether 2,508 MW is commissioned capacity or registered capacity. [UNVERIFIED: the Ministry of Energy statement underlying the 2,508 MW, 509.7 MW and 700 MW figures, and whether the capacity is commissioned or registered]
The scheme's cost is the central missing number. [NEEDS DATA: annual budget outlay on the UZS 1,000 per kWh export subsidy, and whether it is funded from the tariff or from general revenue] So is its shape: the figures give capacity but no installation count and no average system size, so it is impossible to say whether this is a very large number of small household systems or a smaller number of installations near the 50 kW ceiling, which are materially different phenomena. [NEEDS DATA: installation count and average system size under the scheme] Nor is it established how much of the 2,508 MW is genuinely residential rather than commercial capacity connected under the same rules, or how much of the output is exported rather than self-consumed.
The comparison between the export payment and the import tariff in this piece is arithmetic on two separately sourced figures, not something either source states. It holds only if the UZS 1,000 is paid on the monthly net surplus as described, and if no additional charge applies to exporting households. [UNVERIFIED: that no network or service charge offsets the UZS 1,000 export payment] The $0.08 conversion is pv magazine's and was not checked against an exchange rate for the relevant date. Whether the distribution network has encountered hosting-capacity limits, curtailment, or interconnection queues at this penetration is not addressed by any source checked.
Sources
- pv magazine, Uzbekistan has now 2.5 GW of solar under net metering, 7 September 2026: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/09/07/uzbekistan-has-now-2-5-gw-of-solar-under-net-metering/
- Zamin.uz, electricity and gas tariffs updated from 1 June 2026, with residential tier bands: https://zamin.uz/en/uzbekistan/201218-1-iyundan-elektr-va-gaz-tariflari-yangilanadi-nimalar-ozgaradi.html
- Gazeta.uz, Uzbekistan to annually raise gas and electricity tariffs by up to 10 per cent: https://www.gazeta.uz/en/2025/04/09/energy-tariffs/
- IEA, Solar Energy Policy in Uzbekistan: A Roadmap, background on the policy framework: https://www.iea.org/reports/solar-energy-policy-in-uzbekistan-a-roadmap/a-solar-energy-roadmap-for-uzbekistan-by-2030
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