Why Electricity Pricing Is Not Cricket: Reading the Power Purchase Price Scorecard

Seventy-two hours ago I reopened the old Centurion spreadsheet in my Delhi study — the 2026 one with the Indian top-order false-shot rates — and the same evening a producer forwarded me the transcript of Nepra's public hearing and asked, "Sir, this is Pakistan's electricity, where is the cricket?" I read the whole document: 29 information points, six scenarios, cost figures in rupees. Not one ball, not one over, not one batter. And that is the story: an electricity price scorecard has to be read the way we read a win-probability table — base case, worst case and error bars included, not off a headline 8 percent.

Now the context. The Central Power Purchasing Agency (CPPA-G) put its CY2027 Power Purchase Price projection before Nepra, and Nepra questioned the assumptions in a public hearing. The base case puts PPP near Rs27.309 per kWh, assuming 130,081 GWh of sales and 2.6 percent demand growth. Six scenarios were tabled: an ideal case at Rs25.883 and a worst case of Rs28.835 to Rs29.255 per kWh. Total power purchase cost is projected at Rs3.552 trillion, including Rs1.319 trillion in fuel costs and Rs1.914 trillion in capacity charges. Nepra ordered KIBOR revised from 11.70 to 12 percent and sought clarification on RLNG supply, the rupee-dollar rate and Brent prices. Industrial representatives demanded the incremental package be suspended immediately and FCAs applied prospectively.

Here is where the analysis actually starts. Capacity charges sit at Rs14.717 per unit, larger than the base-case fuel component of Rs10.141. That is the number that refuses to move. Even in the ideal-case scenario capacity charges stay at Rs1.914 trillion — meaning that if cheaper fuel arrives, the downside is limited. In my phrasing: whatever the cheap oil saves, the capacity payment eats, much the way good innings get eaten by wickets in the death overs. CPPA-G itself conceded uncertainty over fuel availability, exchange rates and future FCAs. And in Nepra's own hearing, the demand forecasts of CPPA-G, ISMO and the distribution companies diverged — the same disease I call 'model versus eye' in cricket. If demand comes in at 0.70 percent instead of 2.6 percent, fixed costs get spread over fewer units and the per-unit price rises. So higher tariffs cut consumption, lower consumption raises per-unit cost further — a feedback loop no scenario table shows on its own.

I also accept that the Centurion logic breaks here, and I should have written that first. In cricket the innings structure is clean — 20 overs, 10 wickets, one finite resource. Electricity tariff structure is not. The capacity charge is like the opening overs that were never bowled: the money is owed whether the power is generated or not. RLNG supply, the rupee-dollar rate and Brent are three separate inputs whose correlation is not weather at the ground but global markets. And above all, Nepra's order is not a final tariff. Rebasing is due from January 1, 2027, and KIBOR, exchange rates and demand estimates can all shift before then. The headline '8 percent increase' is a proposal, not an approved bill. Here I grade my own miss: last year I treated a fuel-cost projection as final and was wrong three months later — which is why I now publish error bars with every scenario.

The takeaway is plain: over the next three months, Nepra's final determination, the rupee-dollar rate between the 279 and 290 assumptions, RLNG and Brent prices, and actual sales against the 130,081 GWh projection — those four numbers will decide whether the base case holds at Rs27.309 or drifts toward the worst case. A reader who saw only the 8 percent saw the first column of the scorecard. The real match is in the capacity-charge column that never comes down.