Solar panel would be a good investment if you get good quality solar panels like longi, solar or candaian etc . They can last 8 to 12 years and mostly cover there cost in min 2 to 3 years .
My uncle has recently installed 4kw in his farmhouse in kharian and he is pretty satisfied with it ,
but night time there are issues like backup only last 1-2 hrs with single tubular battery , Night time appliances are a fridge and 3 fans and 2 energy saves in summer.
So you would need atleast one tubular battery for inverter startup .
also donot go for on-grid system, always have hybrid or off grid system.
I recommend Canadian solar for the Panels and SOFAR Solar inverters. Batteries aren’t an absolute must and I don’t recommend an off grid system. Hybrid is best, especially because we have so much load shedding (keep in mind if you don’t have batteries, your solar system will not work, even when there is sunlight, because the power cannot directly be provided to your house, with an On or off grid system, if the electricity goes out, then you won’t have power, regardless of the time of day, only hybrid system can solve that, AKA having batteries).
Imo and On-grid is still better than off-grid for smaller capacities like 3.2KW, I don’t know why people keep warning others against On-grid.
another solution which is often cheaper than going all out with big batteries is to get an On-grid Solar system and then install a UPS with a battery for the times when power goes out (this only works in areas where load shedding is not too prevalent, your UPS can cover those few hours and the rest you can have solar+grid, many people in isl/rwp use this setup because load shedding hasn’t been too bad recently).
Is a net metering option a good one?
Install solar panels, and sell to the electric company. No investments in the battery.
Net metering is optional but I would recommend it, anytime you are making excess power, you can get units in exchange for it. However just know that to get Net metering you need to have a system that passed NEPRA specs, they will check it and but you through a stupid, convoluted and corruption filled process where you will wait long times and might have to grease a few pockets to get your green meter, and that’s actually the biggest hurdle to getting solar power with net metering in Pakistan. Not the cost or the systems themselves.