‘Biggest problem with India's rooftop solar industry is lack of quality guarantee on end-to-end product by local installer’

India’s installed grid-connected rooftop solar capacity stands at 18.84 gigawatts, which is 16.2 per cent of the total installed solar power, according to data from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE).

The Union government has been running a scheme, PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana, approved February, 29, 2024, to increase the share of solar rooftop capacity and empower residential households to generate their own electricity.

With an outlay of Rs 75,021 crore, the scheme will provide a subsidy of 60 per cent of the solar unit cost for systems up to 2-kilowatt (kW) capacity and 40 per cent of additional system cost for systems between 2kW and 3kW capacity.

PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana supports domestic manufacturing by mandating the use of solar modules and cells produced in India. As of March 10, 2025, the scheme has facilitated the installation of over 3 GW of rooftop solar capacity, with an additional 27 GW targeted by March 2027. 

Down To Earth speaks with Anubha Shukla, chief commercial officer (CCO) at Husk Power Systems, a rural energy services company in weak-grid and off-grid communities in Africa and Asia, to understand the challenges faced by the sector and how they are addressing some of them. She also leads Husk's affiliate, BEEM, which was launched to rapidly scale India's 30-gigawatt residential rooftop solar market.

Rohini Krishnamurthy: What has India’s rooftop solar journey been like?

Anubha Shukla: In 2023, the government announced a scheme called the Pradhan Mantri Surya Ghar Yojana. For homeowners, the grid's demand would go down as they produce and use their own electricity. And anything extra that is produced is fed into the grid. This scheme was properly launched with the subsidy [provides a Rs 30,000 subsidy for 1 kilowatt (kW) system, Rs 60,000 for 2kW systems and Rs 78,000 for 3kW systems or higher] in 2024.

The government also created a centralised online portal, which requires consumers to be registered. This brings some quality and some standardisation to the process. They have prepared a database for installers to register themselves so that the installers are also certified and they get access to customers as well. The government has also made loans available at very low prices through public sector banks, so that people don't need to spend a lot upfront.

And they have pushed power distribution companies (discoms) and nodal agencies to make sure that customers get a net metering connection so that they can send spare energy back into the grid. This scheme has driven the adoption of solar.

Let's say you instal a solar power plant of your own that is generating 1,400 units annually. If you have some units to spare, it is fed into the grid. But if you need more units to meet the demand for running ACs, you can still buy it from the grid as you are connected. So at the end of the month, your electricity bill is the difference between the total units that you have taken from the grid and the total units you have given back to the grid. In the last 12 months, we have seen residential installations go to three or four times the previous numbers.

RK: How does BEEM come into the picture?

AS: The solar rooftop industry is a young one. A lot of investment has gone towards setting up new solar panel units across the country. Manufacturing has grown. It is a very positive effect overall when it comes to installations. 

We at Husk, which specialises on renewable energy, wanted to contribute and be a part of this journey. That’s how we started BEEM.

Despite good progress from the government, a lot of gaps still remain. So we wanted to take a lead on solving some of them.

One problem is access to installers. A lot of them are very small installers. So, finding the right installer is a big problem.

We turned rooftop solar into a very specific unit, like a car or an air conditioner that comes assembled in a certain way and is delivered and installed in your house. We have turned some 100 odd components that are often delivered separately into a kit. Customers don't make choices on the cables that need to be used or the installation method that is used. It comes end-to-end.

Once a customer finalises the system they want, it arrives at their residence as a kit. The installer arrives the very next day and completes the installation in two days' time.

After that, we help our customers go through the net metering. That is our initiative. We are able to do this because we have partnerships with all our supplies. 

The second problem is standardisation of quality. Solar panels are usually built for 25 years or so, but the rest of the components that go into solar aren't necessarily designed to last for 25 years and that's been a big problem in the market.

When people talk about the return on investment on this as the asset, they talk about the return on investment on the panels. However, in every single solar plant, there are almost 100 different things that go towards making the solar power plant. For example, the inverter, which is the second most important component of it, is usually designed to run for 10 years or so. And there is a possibility that the inverter will get phased out or the technology will get replaced.

If the rest of the parts are not designed to last for 25 years, it doesn't matter how long your panels last because the other components will start crumbling and creating problems. If there is a problem with the system, the homeowner would not be able to get a replacement.

We have standardised our system so that the entire system lasts for 25 years and the homeowners who have spent money and the government that has provided a subsidy can actually benefit over the long term. To ensure this, we are giving five years of all repair, maintenance and, management of the system, all of which is included in our pricing.

If anything goes wrong with the system, it is likely to go wrong in the first few years. So, the first five years of any repair and maintenance and upkeep of the system is entirely taken care by us, and that is included in what we provide to the customers.

RK: Do you instal kits all across India or do you decide the location based on a region’s solar energy potential? 

AS: We get very good radiation across the country, but any place that has over 250 or so of sunny days in a year is usually a good place. So barring few places in the mountains or barring few very rainy places, majority of India can have rooftop solar installed. However, the amount of generation that happens varies slightly depending on the location. 

RK: You also use AI. Could you walk us through how the technology has helped the rooftop solar sector?

AS: We started this initiative only in January, and we were able to launch it in May. And the only reason that we have been able to do this is because of AI. 

There were two or three large challenges that we had. One was being able to reach customers with the kind of information that is required for them. So we built a website as well as an app for our customers. We were able to do this very quickly. The second thing is, we have very strong remote monitoring systems, even now for our mini grids as well. We wanted to give this to our customers as an offering so that the customers can see whether their system is always working properly or not and get alarms if there is a problem with the system and rectify it immediately. So AI has helped here.

So, BEEM is a combination of hardware as well as software. It's not just a pure hardware. It's not just the installation that goes on the roof, but also the also the app, the remote monitoring and end to end services, which have been made possible only because of AI. The time it took for us to reach the market was very fast because of AI. 

Remote monitoring also helps customers optimise the energy consumption and minimise their bill. This is the direction that we want to grow in. We can use AI to analyse the data generated from houses and understand their energy consumption. 

This is important to justify the costs of installing a rooftop solar. Any solar installation system breaks even in about four or maximum five years. This is the cost incurred versus the savings that you get out on your electricity bill.

AI can help further reduce the years needed for customers to break even. After breaking even, the electricity is free for the remaining life of that plant, say the next 20 years.

RK: Could you elaborate on the return on investment?

AS: Let's say, a three-kilowatt system cost can generate 4,200 units of electricity over a year (1kW is 1400 units). If you assume the electricity cost per unit that the customer is paying to the grid is around Rs 10, it means the customer gets Rs 42,000 worth of savings from a 3-kilowatt system. If you assume the cost is Rs 2 lakh, this breaks even towards the end of four years.

Now if you consider the government subsidy of Rs 78,000 (some states provide an additional subsidy above this), the cost come down to Rs 1.25 lakhs. So if you're still saving 42,000 units per year, your system is breaking even in less than three years' time.

AI-based recommendations can further reduce the bill by being able to forecast and understand how many units your solar system is capable of producing. And if you can understand the weather and forecast the number of units that could be generating and giving customers insights based on how they should use power to bring down to minimise their power bills.

RK: What are some challenges in the sector?

AS: There are two big problems that I see overall. The first one is that the quality of the entire end-to-end system is not getting guaranteed by a local installer, and, hence, systems are likely to break down in 3-5 years' time, and people would end up losing money. That's the biggest problem that I see with the industry. 

The second is the lack of adequate safety precautions for houses. The rooftop solar system is a proper electrical powerhouse that installed on top of the house. It is a high voltage setup. The solar plant in no shape, or form can ever affect the family. This should be the first priority of installations.

A lot of people don't actually understand this. A lot of installers don't tell the families about the risks and the systems that are then installed are not necessarily safe and can lead to accidents. That is something that I believe could be a pretty big problem for the industry unless and until we fix it and put safety standards to ensure 100 per cent safety.

RK: What policy support does the rooftop industry need?

AS: The government has done a lot of work, but there are a lot of states and discoms that remain very resistant towards net metering. So a lot more monitoring and forceful effort with discoms is needed. 

The government has put in solar loans through PSUs, and there is a portal in place. But, again, those processes are not very aligned. So there is a lot of running back and forth between banks. That needs to be cleaned up a lot more to make financing happen for a lot more customers because India's total residential capacity, with financing is about 65 gigawatt. Without financing, it drops down to 30 gigawatt or so. So we need to ensure that 65 gigawatts worth of financing is available, and easily attainable for customers.

Next is on the manufacturing end. Government has come up with domestic content requirement (DCR), which provides a subsidy for solar PV cells and modules sourced domestically. Even as a lot of work is happening in setting up manufacturing, the modules that are manufactured in India are not enough to cater to the demand.

The government needs to loosen up the requirements around domestic content requirement to make sure that installations happen as fast as possible and are not held back by the amount of solar panels that are available under the DCR subsidy. 

RK: HUSK is also involved in mini grids for rural consumers. How does this business model work?

AS: The first offering from HUSK was mini grids for rural energy. We have a very specific business model where through our own machine learning and AI models, we understand the economic potential of an area that has power problems. And, we try then we go and assess the area, the market before we set up a solar mini grid.

We sell the electricity usually to the local business people or the local homeowners in this area. Shops that have access to lights can serve customers in the evening. Small manufacturing units with machinery that runs on electricity, local hospitals, banks and schools, all need power as an input, and power is a problem for them.

We call ourselves the diesel generator killers. We focus on entering a market and removing diesel generators from there. We have done this in about 300 villages in India so far, mostly in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and some part of Uttarakhand.

We only have residential customer demand from these villages but it is a lot lesser in India compared to businesses. Businesses need power to generate revenue and to run their families while power is a luxury in houses. People are less willing to spend on luxury than they are on revenue-generating and our focus has then been in growing people's businesses through power.

We also have mini grids in 60 odd villages in Nigeria. In Africa, entire villages and towns are not connected to the grid at all. Hence, a standalone system for serving that entire village or community makes a lot of sense. Individual houses don't make as much sense.

There we are in the mini-grid business, and we are doing commercial and industrial business. and we are expanding further in both in India and Africa.

RK: You also are in the business of irrigation pumps. Are these mini grids connected to the pumps as well?

AS: No. That's another offering that we developed a few years back, under the PM KUSUM Yojna, where there is a lot of focus on solar based irrigation pumps. We have done installation of thousands of pumps across the country, with a lot of our partners.

They come with their own solar panels. It is a combination of solar panels, and a pump that runs on the solar panel that is used by farmers. However, we do serve through mini grids as well, but that's a very small number. 

RK: Do your minigrids run on solar panels?

AS: We own our mini grids. While building these mini grids, we put up solar panels. Our mini grids are hybrid, in that they use multiple power sources. Solar is the primary power source. It is backed by a biomass power plant that we instal.

We manage the energy that is generated through solar and the biomass waste like rice husk, for example, and we use batteries for storage and provide it to our customers whenever they require it.