Solar system for a 10 marla house in Lahore

Why 10 marla is the standard job in this city

Walk any street in Model Town, Garden Town, Johar Town's older blocks, DHA Phase 3 and 4, or Wapda Town, and 10 marla is the plot that repeats. Two hundred and fifty square yards, usually a double storey, usually three or four ACs, usually a family of five to seven with a driver's room at the back. It is the size our crews have installed on more than any other, and the reason the process below reads like a checklist is that it has been run hundreds of times.

Consumption on these homes is high enough that solar makes obvious sense. A 10 marla house in Lahore with three ACs pulls 1,100 to 1,600 units in July. At LESCO's unprotected slab rates of PKR 48 to PKR 65 per unit, that is a bill between PKR 60,000 and PKR 95,000 with taxes and fuel adjustment on top.

Step 1: read the meter, not the bill amount

Bill amounts move with fuel price adjustment, quarterly tariff revisions and slab position, so two identical houses can show different rupee totals for the same units. Sizing should be done on units. Pull twelve months of bills, write down the units column only, add them, divide by twelve.

An average that lands between 700 and 950 units points to 8 kW. Between 950 and 1,300 points to 10 kW. Above 1,300 and the conversation moves to 12 kW or 15 kW, which is a different article. Feed the numbers into the solar calculator for a first pass.

Step 2: 8 kW or 10 kW

A 10 marla roof gives 1,000 to 1,200 square feet of usable deck after the mumty, the tank and a walkway margin. Both sizes fit. The choice is about load, not space.

Profile	Size	Panels (585W)	Units generated per month
Three ACs, single family, no basement	8 kW	14	1,000 to 1,120
Four ACs, lawn pump, deep freezer	10 kW	17	1,250 to 1,400
Four ACs plus rented ground portion	12 kW	21	1,500 to 1,680

One caution on the 12 kW row. Under the 2026 export rules, surplus sold back to LESCO earns far less than the retail rate paid for imports, so building extra capacity purely to export no longer works the way it did three years ago. Size for what the house consumes. What changed and why is set out in the 2026 net metering article.

Step 3: the complete cost breakdown

Here is the full itemised cost for a 10 kW hybrid build with a 10 kWh lithium battery and elevated mounting, which is the most requested configuration on 10 marla houses in Lahore.

Item	Detail	Amount (PKR)
Solar panels	17 × 585W tier-1 @ 19,500	331,500
Hybrid inverter	10 kW	295,000
Lithium battery	2 × 5 kWh modules	570,000
Mounting structure	Elevated, 10 kW @ 12,000/kW	120,000
Electrical items kit	Breakers, SPD, DC combiner, earthing	35,000
Cabling	DC 90m, AC 20m	25,000
Installation labour	4 to 5 day crew	20,000
LESCO net metering	File, drawings, follow-up, meter change	15,000
Turnkey total		1,411,500

Variations from that baseline: standard mounting instead of elevated saves PKR 50,000. Dropping the battery to a single 5 kWh module saves PKR 285,000. Moving to Astronergy 585W N-type panels at PKR 25,450 each adds PKR 101,150 and buys better hot-weather performance. Going to a 15 kWh battery bank adds PKR 285,000. Most complete 10 marla hybrid builds with storage land between PKR 1,400,000 and PKR 2,200,000 once those choices are made. The plain equipment rates are listed on the 2026 installation cost page.

Step 4: inverter and battery decisions

Single phase or three phase

Most 10 marla houses in Lahore are on a single phase connection with a sanctioned load of 10 to 15 kW. A single phase 10 kW hybrid inverter is the simple answer. Houses that already have a three phase connection, common in DHA and parts of Cantt where the original builder installed a lift or a heavy pump, need a three phase hybrid instead, and that costs more. Check the connection type on the bill before accepting any quote.

How much battery

Ten kWh is the sensible default. It carries all lights, fans, both fridges, the router and one 1.5 ton inverter AC through roughly five hours of the night. Fifteen kWh carries two ACs. Five kWh carries essentials only and no AC, which on a 10 marla house in June is a false economy, because the whole reason these owners want storage is the bedroom AC.

Battery choice matters. Prices for a 5 kWh lithium module sit at PKR 285,000, and a 3.5 kWh Pylontech at PKR 195,000 is a reasonable step down. Comparisons for the common brands are on the Pylontech page, the BYD page and the lithium price page. Sizing arithmetic in full is on the battery bank sizing guide.

Step 5: LESCO net metering

The file needs the CNIC of the person named on the bill, the last paid bill, proof of ownership, an equipment list with model numbers, and a single line diagram. The most frequent cause of delay in Lahore is a mismatch: the bill is in a deceased parent's name, or the sanctioned load is 5 kW while the applied system is 10 kW. Load enhancement has to be done first, which adds two to four weeks and a LESCO fee.

Realistic timeline from a clean file to a bidirectional meter is six to ten weeks. The meter reader will visit before installation for verification, and it helps if somebody who knows the system is at home that day. Documentation detail is on the net metering service page, and if the household would rather skip the process altogether, the no net metering route is a real option now that export rates have fallen.

A year in the life of a 10 kW system

Month	Units generated	Units consumed	Typical bill after solar
February	1,050	620	PKR 2,400
April	1,380	880	PKR 2,100
June	1,420	1,560	PKR 12,800
August	1,180	1,610	PKR 21,500
October	1,150	900	PKR 3,900
December	790	640	PKR 4,600

August is the worst month and the reason is not shading or dust. It is cloud from the monsoon combined with the highest AC hours of the year, and it happens on every Lahore install regardless of brand. Figures behind that are in the monsoon output article.

Where money leaks on 10 marla installs

Four things account for most of the wasted spend seen on jobs taken over from other contractors.

• Undersized DC cable on long runs from a rear roof to a front porch inverter, costing three to five percent of yield permanently
• Batteries bought before the backup board was designed, so half the capacity feeds circuits nobody wanted backed up
• Cheap mounting that starts flexing after two monsoons, which then needs the array lifted and re-laid
• No surge protection on a house in an area with frequent LESCO transients, followed by an inverter board failure in year two
• Panels bought on price per watt without checking the datasheet temperature coefficient, which matters in a city that hits 46 degrees

Repair and rework rates are on the repair cost page. Cleaning, which affects yield more than most owners expect on the dusty side of Gulberg and the canal road corridor, is covered on the cleaning service page.

The honest downside

A 10 marla system with a battery is a PKR 1.4 million purchase, and roughly 40 percent of that is the battery, which is the one component guaranteed to need replacing. Lithium modules are warranted for six to ten years and will hold useful capacity for longer, but they will not last the 25 years the panels are rated for. Budget for a battery replacement somewhere in year eight to twelve, at whatever the price is then. Nobody selling storage in Lahore mentions this often enough. The battery replacement article covers what that costs today.

Payback on the panels and inverter alone is strong, typically 30 to 36 months on a 10 marla consumption profile. Payback on the battery portion is not, and treating it as comfort spending rather than investment keeps expectations honest.

Booking and next steps

Site survey is PKR 3,000 and it is adjusted in the final installation bill. On a 10 marla house the engineer takes about 90 minutes: roof measurement, shadow study, DB inspection, earthing check, cable route planning, and a look at the sanctioned load. Installation is four to five days on site once material lands.

Houses in DHA, Model Town, Johar Town and Wapda Town are usually surveyed within 48 hours. Compare against the 10 kW hybrid price article, read the hybrid with battery guide, or send documents through the contact page. Build process detail is on the installation page and storage design on the hybrid and battery page.