Rooftop solar in India: where it stands

By 22 July 2026 the PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana had reached 48,02,717 households covered by 39,72,447 systems as of 22 July 2026, a little under half of the target of one crore households set when the scheme was approved. The scheme is due to end on 31 March 2027, so the second half has less time than the first half took.

This page is the national picture: where the scheme stands, what the rooftop market looked like before it, and what both mean if you are deciding on a system in Delhi, Noida or Varanasi this quarter. The subsidy rules themselves are on the subsidy guide.

Where PM Surya Ghar stands

The scheme was launched 13 February 2024, Cabinet-approved 29 February 2024, with an outlay of ₹75,021 crore, target 1 crore households. The progress figure above is the ministry's own, given in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha on 28 July 2026. The same reply gives the budget for the financial year 2026-27 and how much of it had been spent by 22 July; a little under half of the year's money had gone out in the first four months, which is the clearest sign that the pace of installations has not slowed. The exact figures are in the questions at the end of this page.

Two things in those numbers matter more than the headline. First, the count is of households covered, not of kW installed, so it says nothing about how big the average system is. Second, the household count is higher than the system count, so one system can be counted for more than one household; the housing-society route the scheme allows, at ₹18,000 per kW for common facilities, is one way that happens.

The scheme pays ₹30,000 per kW for the first 2 kW and ₹18,000 for the third, so ₹78,000 is the most a home receives from the Centre. Delhi and Uttar Pradesh each add a state subsidy on top; the state pages set those out.

The market the scheme inherited

In April 2023, ten months before PM Surya Ghar, Verde Solaire published a short note on the rooftop market using Mercom India Research's figures for calendar year 2022. Mercom reported that India added 1.6 GW of rooftop solar in 2022, about 4% less than the 1.7 GW of 2021, and that commercial and industrial (C&I) customers accounted for 67% of what was installed.

Those are 2022 figures and they describe a different market. Rooftop solar was then mostly a factory and office decision, taken because commercial tariffs are high and the payback is short. Homes were a third of the market at most. The note also recorded two brakes on growth at the time: the basic customs duty on imported modules had pushed project costs up, and installers were unsure whether grid-connected rooftop projects had to use modules from the approved list, the ALMM.

Both brakes have since been resolved in the direction of Indian-made equipment. The subsidy now requires that both the modules and the cells must be made in India, and from 1 June 2026 the cells must come from a maker on ALMM List-II. The ALMM List-II guide explains how to check a quote against the list.

We have not found a figure for national rooftop additions in 2025 or 2026 from a source we are prepared to cite, so this page does not give one. The household count above is the reliable measure of the residential side.

What the national portal does

Every subsidised home system in India goes through one website, pmsuryaghar.gov.in. You register with your state, electricity board, consumer number and mobile number, then apply for rooftop solar and choose an installer from the list of registered vendors. The electricity board approves feasibility, the vendor installs, you upload the plant details and apply for the net meter, the board inspects, the portal issues the commissioning certificate, you submit bank details, and the subsidy is credited.

The order is the point. The installer is paid by you, and the government pays you afterwards. A quote that shows a "subsidised price" as if the subsidy were a discount at the till is describing the money flow wrongly; the who-pays-whom page has the sequence. If you are following an application through, the portal help page explains each status.

What this means for a homeowner today

Your installer must be on the portal. The rule is that the installer must be a vendor registered on the national portal, and you choose the vendor on pmsuryaghar.gov.in. Verde Solaire is a registered PM Surya Ghar vendor in both Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, with more than 50 MW of solar projects behind it. Because registration is a portal step rather than a quality mark, the practical question is not whether a company is registered but whether it has done systems like yours in your electricity board's area; the vendor check guide is a short list of what to ask.

Timelines are now written down in Delhi. Since 16 July 2026 the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) requires the electricity board to connect a system of up to 10 kW within 10 days of application, with no application fee for domestic systems. Uttar Pradesh has no equivalent day count in a regulation we can cite; the Noida net-metering page sets out what PVVNL asks for.

The subsidy arrives after commissioning. The official figure is "within 30 days" of the claim; about 15 days on average. In practice it is reported as 30–45 days after verification in practice.

Not yet official. Reported by trade and news sources; the official figure is within 30 days.

The deadline is real, and so is the queue. The scheme ends on 31 March 2027. the Centre is reported to be considering a 3–4 month extension. Until a notification appears, the working assumption is that a system must be commissioned, with its net meter in, before the end date. With the year's budget going out at the pace above, the sensible reading is that the second half of the target will be installed in a hurry, and hurried installations are where the problems described on the common problems page come from. Fixing the size, the panel make and model, and the payment stages in writing before you pay an advance is more valuable now than it was in 2024.

Not yet official. Reported, not official. The scheme end date remains 31 March 2027 until MNRE says otherwise.