With just a year left before its scheduled closure, the Prime Minister Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana has achieved only about 25 per cent of its target, with 25.75 lakh residential rooftop solar installations so far.

The scheme, launched in February 2024, provides subsidies for one crore residential rooftop solar installations of up to 3 kW and is scheduled to close in March 2027. The installations achieved so far have consumed about 24 per cent of the ₹75,000 crore allocated for subsidies.

The scheme also aims to create 30 GW of residential rooftop solar capacity, but installations so far add up to only 9.4 GW (as of March 11). Incidentally, the country’s total rooftop solar capacity (residential and industrial/commercial) has just crossed the 25 GW mark.

In February, the government told Parliament there is no plan to extend the scheme beyond March 2027.

The spread of installations under the scheme is also skewed, with only seven States accounting for over 80 per cent. Gujarat tops with 5.78 lakh installations, drawing ₹4,330 crore in subsidies, followed by Maharashtra (4.71 lakh, ₹3,456 crore), Uttar Pradesh (3.98 lakh, ₹2,753 crore), Kerala (2 lakh, ₹1,462 crore), Rajasthan (1.5 lakh, ₹1,060 crore), Andhra Pradesh (1.07 lakh, ₹734 crore) and Madhya Pradesh (1 lakh, ₹734 crore).

Assam is nearing the one-lakh mark, with 95,685 installations so far, drawing ₹684 crore in subsidies.

The roadblocks

What is holding back progress?

In a recent article, Gaurav Upadhyay, Energy Finance Analyst with the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), and Prabhakar Sharma, Senior Consultant at JMK Research, cited several reasons for the slow progress. One of them — “the long wait between application and power generation” — weakens consumer confidence, they say.

The national portal for the scheme shows that 65.21 lakh applications have been received, against which 25.75 lakh installations have been completed — a conversion rate of 39 per cent. This is low, even after allowing for the inevitable time lag between application and installation.

Low consumer awareness, a perception that installing rooftop solar is complicated, slow disbursal of subsidies, and supply constraints in the mandated domestically produced solar modules are among the other reasons cited by Upadhyay and Sharma.

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Published on March 16, 2026