PM Surya Ghar: India's Rooftop Bet Moves the Solar Problem From Land to Distribution Companies
On 29 February 2024 India's Union Cabinet approved PM-Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana, a rooftop solar programme with a total outlay of Rs 75,021 crore. The scheme, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 13 February, aims to install rooftop systems on one crore households, ten million homes, and to give each of them up to 300 units of free electricity a month. The government estimates that it will add 30 GW of residential rooftop capacity, generate 1,000 billion units over the 25-year life of the systems and avoid 720 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
India has tried to scale residential rooftop solar before and fallen well short. The target of 40 GW of rooftop solar by 2022 was missed by a wide margin: by December 2022 only about 7.4 GW had been installed, according to Mercom's tally, and the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy had warned years earlier that the goal was highly unlikely to be met. It covers 60 per cent of system cost for the first 2 kW and 40 per cent of the additional cost between 2 and 3 kW, capped at 3 kW.
The Cabinet note says a 3 kW system will generate more than 300 units a month on average, which is how the free electricity promise is met. Previous rooftop programmes relied on distribution companies to process applications, approve connections and install net meters. Subsidy delivery was also slow and complex, routed through state agencies with varying capacity. Vendors faced delayed payments, and households faced long waits for net meters. A single national portal, direct subsidy payment and access to cheap loans remove friction for households and vendors.
At the same time, rooftop systems export power at midday, when many networks already have surplus solar from utility-scale plants. The way states handle net metering will determine whether the scheme scales smoothly. A fourth indicator is less visible but equally important: distribution network investment. PM Surya Ghar is the best-designed residential solar programme India has launched, and its subsidy structure and national portal remove most of the obstacles that undermined earlier efforts.