Updated: August 2026
You apply for an IESCO new connection at iesco.enc.com.pk, IESCO’s own branch of the national Electricity New Connection (ENC) portal, or through the IESCO Smart App, or on paper at your nearest Customer Facilitation Center. Applying costs nothing. You attach around half a dozen documents (CNIC copies, ownership proof, a stamp-paper affidavit and a wiring test report do the heavy lifting), IESCO surveys the site, and for a household connection of up to 15 kW it must issue your demand notice within 10 days of a complete application. Pay that notice at a designated bank or through the portal, and NEPRA’s Consumer Service Manual gives IESCO 30 days in total to put a meter on your wall.
That is the whole machine. This guide walks through each moving part for applicants across the capital region, from Islamabad and Rawalpindi out to Jhelum, Chakwal, Attock, Taxila, Gujar Khan and Fateh Jang: exactly which documents to prepare, what the demand notice really costs, whether you need single-phase or three-phase, and what to do when the file stops moving. If you are on another company, the process is nearly identical nationwide; see our national ENC portal guide for the differences between DISCOs.
The process at a glance
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Where to apply | iesco.enc.com.pk, the national enc.com.pk, the IESCO Smart App / Power Smart App, or any IESCO Customer Facilitation Center |
| Application fee | None. Forms are free; your first payment is the demand notice |
| Core documents | CNIC (applicant + witness), ownership proof, stamp-paper affidavit, wiring test report; map/NOC for urban houses and shops |
| Demand notice due | Within 10 days of a complete application (up to 15 kW) |
| Total time standard | 30 days for up to 15 kW, per NEPRA Consumer Service Manual (Revised 2025), Annexure III |
| Tracking | ENC portal > Track, with your tracking ID or CNIC |
| Help | IESCO helpline 118, SMS 8118, CCMC 051-9252933 |
Before you apply: single-phase or 3-phase?
The load you declare on the form decides your meter, your tariff and part of your cost, so settle it first.
Single-phase covers the ordinary Pakistani house: lights, fans, fridge, washing machine, one or two inverter ACs. Most homes in Islamabad and Rawalpindi declare 2 to 4 kW. You stay on normal slab billing, where each month’s units decide your rate; the current slabs sit in our IESCO per-unit price guide.
Three-phase becomes relevant when your sanctioned load reaches 5 kW. Two consequences follow, and both are written into the rules rather than left to the SDO’s mood:
- At 5 kW and above, time-of-use (TOU) billing is compulsory. Your meter records peak and off-peak units separately, and evening units cost more. The Consumer Service Manual goes further: if a single-phase meter’s recorded load creeps toward 5 kW, IESCO is required to serve notice and swap in a TOU meter. How the peak window works, and whether TOU helps or hurts you, is covered in our peak hours guide.
- Your security deposit and works estimate scale with kilowatts, so over-declaring load costs real money for capacity you never draw.
Do not panic about transformer costs at household sizes. Under the manual, residential connections up to 20 kW are fed from the common distribution transformer in your street; a dedicated transformer only enters the picture above that, or when the local transformer has no spare capacity, a real bottleneck in older Rawalpindi feeders.
One more option worth knowing: a temporary connection for house construction runs for six months, extendable in three-month blocks, with the security deposit set at the estimated cost of the electricity you expect to use. Convert it to a regular connection when the house is done, and the deposit is adjusted.
Documents for an IESCO new connection
This list comes from NEPRA’s Consumer Service Manual (Revised 2025 edition), the rulebook every DISCO follows, and matches the specimen forms IESCO publishes on its ENC portal.
| Document | Notes for IESCO applicants |
|---|---|
| Attested CNIC copy of applicant | Plus an attested CNIC copy of one witness |
| Ownership proof | Registry, fard from the patwari or land record centre, allotment letter or sale deed, as accepted by IESCO for your area |
| Affidavit on stamp paper | States that no connection existed at the premises before, that you will clear any old dues later discovered, and that you are not a defaulter of any DISCO |
| Wiring test report | Issued by the Electric Inspector or an authorised wiring contractor, so the house wiring must be complete before you apply |
| Approved map / site plan / NOC | Required for urban houses and shops in CDA, RDA and cantonment limits; IESCO can relax it in rural areas where no civic-agency approval applies. Homes inside approved societies are exempt |
| Neighbour’s bill copy | IESCO often asks for a copy of an adjoining premises’ recent bill to pin your location to the right feeder and sub-division |
| Tenant papers (if renting) | Owner’s NOC, the owner’s CNIC copy, plus the owner’s own stamp-paper undertaking accepting responsibility if the tenant defaults |
| Company papers (if applicable) | Incorporation certificate, board resolution authorising a signatory, directors’ list with CNIC copies |
Three IESCO-specific notes. First, the affidavit is not a formality: if you turn out to be a defaulter on another connection, IESCO can disconnect you after a seven-day notice. Second, the map/NOC rule generates more rejections inside CDA and cantonment limits than any other line item, because plots carved out of unapproved schemes on the fringes of Islamabad and Rawalpindi cannot produce one. Third, if the property has co-owners, bring their written no-objection along; ownership disputes freeze files indefinitely.
Blank specimens of the NOC and the stamp-paper undertakings, along with the connection conditions and an Urdu copy of the procedure, are downloadable from the ENC portal’s home page.
How to apply online: step by step
- Open iesco.enc.com.pk and select Apply (Apply New Connection). You can reach the same form through the national enc.com.pk by picking IESCO as your company, or through the IESCO Smart App and Power Smart App on the Play Store.
- Choose IESCO as the company and pick the category you are applying under: domestic, commercial, industrial, agricultural or temporary supply.
- Fill in the form: name, father’s name, CNIC without dashes, mobile number, premises address, tariff category and the load you are requesting in kW. Declare load honestly; the wiring test report has to back it up.
- Upload scans of the documents from the table above.
- Submit and save your tracking ID. The portal issues an acknowledgement with a serial number; the manual obliges IESCO to tell you (by letter, email, phone or through the portal) if anything is missing rather than sitting on the file.
- Site survey. An IESCO surveyor checks whether supply is feasible at your premises and whether the street transformer has spare capacity. For connections up to 15 kW the registration, survey and test-report verification are budgeted four days.
- Demand notice issued. Cost estimate preparation and issuance get another six days, which is why a complete Category-1 application must produce a demand notice by day 10. You can also print it yourself from the portal’s Print DN option using your tracking ID.
- Pay the demand notice (details in the next section), then upload or deposit the paid receipt so the payment registers against your file. The portal has an Upload DN option for exactly this.
- Works order and material. IESCO issues the service connection order, draws cable, poles and hardware from stores, and executes the work: 11 days in the standard for small connections.
- Meter installation. The final nine days cover installing your new meter and energising the connection. The meter is supplied at your cost through the estimate; the upside, fixed in the manual, is that no monthly meter rent can be charged afterwards.
Commercial applicants in central Islamabad should know one wrinkle: IESCO routes some commercial cases through a dedicated Business Facilitation Center rather than the ordinary sub-division counter, so the portal may send you there instead of the usual sub-division office. Prefer paper? The identical form is free at your Customer Facilitation Center, and staff must help you fill it. Everything else, deadlines included, works the same.
What an IESCO new connection costs
There is no flat IESCO connection fee. Ignore the single-figure “new meter price” quoted on unofficial bill-checking sites; no such number exists in any official schedule. Your demand notice is built case by case from two stacks:
1. Capital cost / connection charges. The actual material needed to connect your premises (service cable, hardware, the meter itself), priced at store issue rates plus 12% store handling, plus 8% installation charges. A house next to an existing pole needs very little; a plot far from the line, common on the outskirts of Chakwal, Attock and Gujar Khan, needs more. The manual requires IESCO to attach the complete itemised estimate to the demand notice, so if yours arrives as a bare total, ask for the bill of quantities; you are entitled to it.
2. Security deposit. Refundable, payable per kilowatt of sanctioned load, at the rates fixed in Annexure IV of the Consumer Service Manual (Revised 2025). This schedule is national, so IESCO applies the same figures every other DISCO does:
| Consumer class | Security deposit |
|---|---|
| Residential (A-1), urban | Rs 1,220 per kW |
| Residential (A-1), rural | Rs 610 per kW |
| Commercial (A-2), urban | Rs 1,810 per kW |
| Commercial (A-2), rural | Rs 920 per kW |
| Industrial (B-1) | Rs 1,580 per kW |
| Agricultural tube-well (D) | Rs 15,000 lump sum |
So a 4 kW urban house in Islamabad puts down Rs 4,880 as its deposit; the works estimate on top depends entirely on your street. Two protections are worth memorising. If material prices rise while IESCO is still inside its installation window, residential applicants up to 20 kW and commercial applicants up to 15 kW cannot be charged escalation. And you may request payment of the demand notice in installments, on which the manual forbids any mark-up.
Once the meter starts spinning, your monthly cost is a different subject: run your expected units through the IESCO bill calculator to see the full bill with fixed charges and taxes before your first one lands.
Paying the demand notice
The demand notice reaches you by registered post, courier or through the portal, and you can collect or print it yourself with your tracking ID. From issuance you have 30 days to pay, and you can get one 30-day grace extension if you request it at least three days before the deadline. Let it lapse and the file dies; you start over.
Where to pay:
- Designated bank branches. The notice itself names the banks authorised to collect it and the due date. Deposit there, keep the stamped receipt, and hand a copy to the sub-division or push it through the portal’s Upload DN screen so your payment is registered.
- Online through the ENC portal, via the Pay DN option, where the online payment facility is live for your case. If the option does not appear for your application, the bank counter always works.
Payment is the pivot of the whole process: your final priority number for connection is assigned only after the demand notice is paid, and IESCO’s remaining deadlines count from full payment.
How long it really takes
The current standard comes straight from Annexure III of NEPRA’s Consumer Service Manual (Revised 2025):
| Category | Load | Sanctioning officer | Standard time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Up to 15 kW | SDO / AM | 30 days |
| 2 | Above 15 up to 70 kW | XEN / DM | 44 days |
| 3 | Above 70 up to 500 kW | SE / Manager | 58 days |
| 4 | Above 500 up to 5,000 kW (11/33 kV) | CEO | 106 days |
| 5 | 66 kV and above | CEO | 496 days |
These figures are for individual connections. If you see different day counts elsewhere, check which edition of the manual the guide is quoting; the Revised 2025 CSM is the one in force.
Now the honest part. These clocks run from a complete application, and every missing document pauses everything without technically breaching the standard. Where IESCO applications genuinely stall, it is usually the demand notice sitting unpaid, an overloaded street transformer that needs augmentation on cost-deposit basis, or material shortages at the divisional store. The manual does give you a lever: for every day beyond the standard, IESCO must record its reasons in writing to you, with a copy to NEPRA, and the delay does not cancel its obligation to connect you. Asking your SDO, politely and in writing, for those recorded reasons has a way of reviving sleepy files.
Tracking your application and who to contact
Track online: open the ENC portal, choose Track, select “New Connection”, company IESCO, then enter either your tracking ID or your CNIC without dashes. The same screen serves name, load and tariff-change cases.
IESCO’s live contact channels (from iesco.com.pk): helpline 118, SMS 8118, and the Central Complaint Management Cell on 051-9252933 and 051-9252934. The head office switchboard is 051-9252937 at Street 40, Sector G-7/4, Islamabad. For sitting across a desk from a human, IESCO runs Customer Facilitation Centers across the region; the full list lives on its Customer Centers page:
| Centre | Address | Phone |
|---|---|---|
| Blue Area, Islamabad | Behind Shaheed-e-Millat, China Chowk, Blue Area | 051-9244301 |
| G-9, Islamabad | Double Road, near Grid Station, Sector G-9/3 | 051-2285931 |
| Chandni Chowk, Rawalpindi | Chandni Chowk, Rawalpindi | 051-9290845 |
| Marrir Hassan, Rawalpindi | Marrir Hassan, Rawalpindi | 051-9292692 |
| Taxila | GT Road, near Lari Adda, Taxila | 051-9314162 |
| Jhelum | GTS Chowk, Jhelum Cantt | 0544-920169 |
| Chakwal | Tehsil Chowk, Zila Council Plaza, Chakwal | 0543-553279 |
| Attock | Near Jamia Masjid, Islamia High School, Attock City | 057-2702756 |
| Fateh Jang | Near NADRA Office, Fateh Jang | 057-2212067 |
IESCO’s list shows no dedicated centre for Gujar Khan or Murree; the Rawalpindi centres are the closest listed offices, and the local sub-division handles those tehsils directly. If a complaint about your application goes nowhere at the sub-division, our electricity complaint helplines guide maps the escalation ladder from SDO up to NEPRA’s consumer affairs office.
Why applications get rejected or stuck
- Incomplete documents. The most common cause by far. IESCO must inform you what is missing, but the clock effectively restarts when you supply it.
- No approvable map or NOC. Urban houses and shops inside CDA, RDA and cantonment limits need one unless an exemption applies. Plots in unapproved schemes hit this wall; homes inside approved societies are exempt by rule.
- Ownership disputes. Contested inheritance, missing fard, or co-owners who refuse consent. IESCO will not arbitrate; it simply parks the file.
- Old dues on the premises. Your affidavit binds you to pay any previously undiscovered arrears, and in practice a sub-division will not move a new file while a theft detection bill against the premises sits unpaid.
- Transformer capacity. If the street transformer is full, your connection may wait for augmentation, or you may be offered capacity on cost-deposit or sharing-charge terms.
- Failed or mismatched wiring test. The declared load must match what the Electric Inspector’s report supports.
- Expired demand notice. Thirty days, one extension. After that, a fresh application.
- Court restraining orders. Some areas carry blanket orders against new connections; IESCO is required to check before energising.
If IESCO concludes it cannot serve your premises at all, the manual requires it to return your application with written reasons within the same window it had for issuing a demand notice.
From kunda to a legal meter
If the premises currently runs on a kunda, the legal route is simply the process above: a normal ENC application, with your affidavit covering any dues later found against the address. There is no published amnesty or regularisation scheme in force as of August 2026, so be wary of anyone offering to “convert” a kunda for a fee outside official channels. Where a theft case or detection bill already exists against the premises, settle it before the new file moves. With theft raids now routine across IESCO’s divisions, a metered connection is the cheaper path in every month after the first.
After the meter goes in
Three small chores finish the job properly. Register your CNIC and mobile number against the new reference number so bills and SMS alerts reach you. Pull your bill online the moment the first one is issued; our IESCO bill check guide shows how, and if the printed bill has not arrived you can still find it without the reference number. And set up how you will pay the IESCO bill online so the first due date never slips past you.
Applying for a connection under a different company? The same national portal serves LESCO, GEPCO, PESCO, HESCO, SEPCO, QESCO and TESCO, and our all-DISCOs hub links the bill and connection guides for every company in Pakistan.
FAQs
How much does an IESCO new connection cost in 2026?
There is no fixed fee. Your demand notice adds two amounts: the actual cost of material and works for your premises (material at store rates plus 12% store handling plus 8% installation charges) and a refundable security deposit of Rs 1,220 per kW for urban homes or Rs 610 per kW for rural homes. A 4 kW urban house in Islamabad therefore deposits Rs 4,880 as security, while the works portion depends on how far your premises is from the existing line.
How long does an IESCO new connection take?
NEPRA’s Consumer Service Manual (Revised 2025) allows 30 days in total for connections up to 15 kW, counted on a complete application: demand notice within 10 days, works order and material within the next 11, and meter installation in the final 9. Larger connections get 44 days (up to 70 kW) or 58 days (up to 500 kW). If IESCO exceeds the standard, it must give you day-by-day written reasons with a copy to NEPRA.
How do I apply for an IESCO new connection online?
Open iesco.enc.com.pk (or enc.com.pk and pick IESCO), choose Apply, select your category and load, fill in your CNIC and premises details, upload the required documents, and save the tracking ID. You can also apply through the IESCO Smart App or the Power Smart App, or on paper at any Customer Facilitation Center. IESCO then surveys the site and issues a demand notice you pay at a designated bank or through the portal.
What documents do I need for an IESCO new meter?
You need an attested CNIC copy of the applicant and one witness, ownership proof (registry, fard, allotment letter or sale deed), an affidavit on stamp paper confirming no prior connection and no default, and a wiring test report from the Electric Inspector or an authorised contractor. Urban houses and shops inside CDA, RDA and cantonment limits also need an approved map or NOC, and tenants need the owner’s NOC, CNIC copy and undertaking.
Do I need a three-phase IESCO connection?
Only if your sanctioned load is 5 kW or more, which usually means several non-inverter ACs, a tube-well or workshop machinery. At 5 kW and above, time-of-use billing becomes compulsory, so evening units cost more than daytime units. Most houses in the capital region declare 2 to 4 kW and stay on an ordinary single-phase meter with slab billing.
How do I track my IESCO new connection application?
Open the ENC portal, choose Track, select New Connection and IESCO, then enter your tracking ID or your CNIC without dashes. The portal shows the stage your file has reached. For queries the live IESCO channels are helpline 118, SMS 8118, the Central Complaint Management Cell on 051-9252933 and 051-9252934, or any IESCO Customer Facilitation Center in person.
Can I get a temporary IESCO connection for construction?
Yes. A construction connection is granted for six months initially and can be extended in three-month blocks until the project finishes. The security deposit equals the estimated cost of electricity you will use during the period, and it is refunded on disconnection or adjusted if you convert the temporary connection into a regular one.