India has an abundance of sunlight. In fact, the government said that by March 2027, it wants a crore homes to go solar. But, by March 2026, we were only about a quarter of the way there. What’s going on here?

Gaurav, a renewable energy consultant, told me that he was seeing electricity bills of around 2,500. So he decided to go solar.

After subsidies and a low-interest loan, he paid just about Rs 20,000 upfront.

And now, his bills are often zero. Solar was a no-brainer for him.

But, for many consumers, especially rural ones, their electricity bills are already very low.

And that is the paradox of India’s solar boom.

To learn more about Gaurav’s process and why some consumers may or may not want solar, check out the latest episode of The Signal Brief.

The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

NOTE: A machine transcribed this episode. A human has looked at this text but there might still be errors. Please refer to the audio above, if you need to clarify something. If you want to give us feedback, please write to us at feedback@thecore.in.

TRANSCRIPT:

Gaurav:   So I got solar, so I got installed solar panel, I guess last year, last March, March of 25. But the documentation was started in March 2025. But the installation took place, I guess, in middle of April.

Kudrat (Host): Imagine stepping onto your rooftop in Delhi on a blistering 45-degree summer afternoon.

The sun beats down relentlessly on the concrete, turning the terrace into an oven.

You look up at those shiny new solar panels glistening overhead and ask the question that so many Indian homeowners are pondering in 2026: Will this finally kill my electricity bill? Or is it just another expensive dream?

Gaurav, a renewable energy consultant, did exactly that. And he’s one among lakhs of Indians who’ve taken the leap into buying solar panels.

In February 2024, the government launched the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana. The dream was big–one crore homes with solar panels by March 2027.

As of March 2026, we’ve only reached about 26 lakh installations. Just a quarter of the way there.

So what’s happening on the ground? Why is this revolution moving slower than expected?

Kudrat (Host): My name is Kudrat Wadhwa and you’re listening to The Signal Brief. We don’t do hot takes. Instead we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends.

In today’s episode, we look at India’s solar boom. What does installing solar actually involve for regular consumers? And why are so many choosing to stay away?

Kudrat (Host): Now, because Gaurav works in the renewable energy sector, he was more familiar with the process than most people.

Gaurav saw that every month, like clockwork, his home’s electricity bill would arrive and ruin his mood.

Gaurav: Basically my electricity, like there are two at my home. My electricity, my electricity bill was getting high. So like I used to pay like 25, 2500 or 2000 rupees like that on a monthly basis.

Kudrat (Host): One of Gaurav’s relatives runs a solar installation company. That personal connection made things smoother.

Gaurav:  So I just got in touch with him and, you know, he consulted me that this kind of benefits you'll be getting once you'll be going to install solar. And, you know, I'm energy consultant as well, so I already knew the benefits, which kind of cost advantage I could get if I'm going to install a solar system at my home, right. So that is why I just went ahead to install a solar system at my home.

Kudrat (Host): But unlike Gaurav, most consumers are poorly informed. I spoke to Tanish, founder of AMT Energy, a Gurugram-based solar installation company.

Tanish: In general, very few people are actually getting the proper knowledge regarding solar because there are different and various types of systems based on different types of requirements. So the people who come to us and ask us about solar, they actually don't know what requirement will suit them, what panel, what inverter, or anything that is to do with them. So there is still an information gap that has to be covered.

Kudrat (Host): So Tanish doesn’t start with sales. He starts with a classroom on the rooftop.

He explains there are two different kinds of solar:

On-grid. These are panels that connect directly to your normal electricity line. No heavy batteries. Cheaper. Perfect for cities like Delhi, Gurgaon, or Mumbai where power is mostly reliable.

Off-grid. These include big batteries. Much more expensive. Only make sense in small towns and villages where the lights go off for hours every day.

Tanish:  My, our usual pitch in the company, like usually we are much more focused on educating the customer first on what they require. For example, in urban cities where there are like 20 to 24 hours constant electricity, we prefer to, like prefer not government requirements, tell them to use on-grid systems only. And if rural areas are present, we tell them to use off-grid systems.

And on-grid systems are those which are connected to the grid and they don't require any battery. Off-grid systems require battery and are only available, or we sell it to people who don't have proper access to electricity, only five to six hours a day. So we need to educate, and we educate them regarding what they want and what they should buy regarding the price also, because off-grid system costs much more than on-grid systems.

Kudrat (Host): Off-grid systems, as Tanish said, cost much more, sometimes 40-100% more.

After that, installers determine the size of the system based on your electricity usage.

Gaurav walked me through how this worked in his case.

Gaurav: And so the process is like, firstly they just came to your home and, you know, they just create ID in PM or something like that. PM, you know, right. So they just create a user ID or password based on your name and, you know, get your other card or something like that.

Based on that, your documentation work started from that day itself, right. So what I did is I basically got a loan again that the total cost was around for three kilowatt system. And the parameter through which we decide how much kilowatt of solar we require, so that is based on your meter capacity. If you are five kilowatt of meter, you can go for three as well as five kilowatt of solar system, right.

And if you have a four kilowatt of solar system, it means that your bill is not getting too much high. That would fluctuate between 1000, 2000, 2500 like that. So based on that, I did my selection that I need to go for three solar system since the three kilowatt solar system is efficient to make 12 to 15 units per day. That comes up around 500 units on a monthly basis, right.

So that was my consumption. So based on that, they suggested me that I need to install a three kilowatt solar system. And yeah, so that was the step. And after that, so the loan facility is also quite easy, I would say. So all the work related to documentation, that is taken care by of my business plan only. And the interest rate is also pretty much on the lower side. That was around 6%. Yeah.

Kudrat (Host): India is pushing solar adoption aggressively, especially in the residential segment.

The PM Surya Ghar scheme offers subsidies and low-interest loans to make solar more accessible.

Gaurav, for instance, paid only around Rs 20,000 upfront.

Gaurav:  I think I submitted 20,000 rupee only, just 10% of the total amount, okay. Yeah. So total, it cost you, so total amount was two, out of which I got a subsidy of 86,000. And like that subsidy was transferred to my account within two weeks, I would say. Yeah, within two weeks.

Kudrat (Host): One reason the government is offering these subsidies is to support domestic manufacturing.

Without subsidies, imported solar panels, especially from China, are significantly cheaper.

Here’s Tanish again.

Tanish: So let's take an example, like per a normal panel, India-made panel is at least 25 rupees per watt. And Chinese panel, a non-DCR one, is nine times cheaper, approximately 16–17 rupees per watt. So these, on average, it creates a difference of at least 9000 rupees per kilowatt.

So if you install a system of three kilowatt, you will choose a 27,000 rupees difference between the DCR and non-DCR.

Kudrat (Host): DCR stands for Domestic Content Requirement. It means only solar panels where both the cells and modules are manufactured in India qualify for government subsidies.

Tanish: Means the DCR one will be 27,000 more expensive, but here comes the subsidy part. The subsidy is 78,000, so usually customer will go for that only and claim the subsidy, but the quality remains almost same in both of them. Sometimes DCR even hosts better than the non-DCR.

I think that's a very good law because that has forced our industry, and I mean majorly the manufacturing parties, to up their game. And companies are manufacturing much more and have actually boosted India's panel manufacturing growth to a second position internationally.

Although we started late, we had many countries like Germany, but we are currently producing much more solar than Germany and other countries that were far ahead of us.

Kudrat (Host): On paper, the scheme offers almost everything: upfront subsidies, low-interest loans, and a user-friendly national portal.

So why are we still only at 26 lakh installations?

Sureet: My name is Sureet. I am a solar supply chain analyst at Wood McKenzie. Wood McKenzie is a market research firm that works in energy, metals and mining renewables.

So, you know, fundamentally, why would someone invest in solar? Whether it's a utility or a CNI consumer or a residential consumer, it's so that you don't buy electricity from the grid, and maybe you can even make money off selling electricity to the utilities, right.

But over, I wanna say maybe the last 10 years, the electricity prices that consumers have been receiving, especially for the middle class, have gone down, or have, you know, relative to other segments not gone up as much. So electricity is very cheap for people within the middle class.

So then that also reduces the demand for solar as well. You know, CNI consumers, like the way that the electricity tariffs in India are structured, agricultural consumers and consumers below the poverty line pay close to nothing. Middle-class consumers pay very subsidised rates, but industrial and commercial consumers pay very high rates.

So you see a lot of solar adoption in the CNI segment for this reason, because they're thinking they can offset this huge overhead they have, which is the electricity prices, by installing solar. For residential consumers, that effect is sort of decreased, right, because if you're already not paying very much for electricity, the benefits of installing solar are also lower.

Kudrat (Host): And that is the hidden twist in this story.

The same government that is pushing solar is also heavily subsidising regular grid electricity.

In many villages, people pay less than Rs 200 a month. Why would they spend lakhs on panels?

Gaurav has seen this in the villages near his hometown in Uttarakhand.

Gaurav:  The rural area people was not installing solar at their own since they had, like, their electric bill was quite low, like under 200 rupees for a month. Why they would, why they would be investing to like all three lakh for system, yeah, right. Yeah, that is a complete waste. That is why the policy got failing rural area in India completely.

Kudrat (Host): Another less-talked-about challenge is this: rooftop solar works best when you actually own your roof. That’s easy if you live in an independent house or villa. But in metros like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Gurugram, most people live in apartment buildings, where the rooftop is shared.

Installing solar here isn’t an individual decision. It needs majority approval from the Resident Welfare Association or housing society. And that makes everything far more complicated.

Many societies hesitate due to structural load concerns, aesthetics, disagreements on who pays what, and how savings will be divided.

That’s why, in big cities, adoption remains stronger in independent houses than in dense high-rise apartments.

But it’s not impossible. Several Mumbai housing societies have successfully installed large systems on common rooftops and now power 90-100% of lifts, pumps, lighting, and clubhouses with solar, saving crores annually.

The key? Strong RWA leadership and clear agreements on costs and benefits.

And yet, despite all these hurdles, paperwork, approvals, and shared rooftops, for households whose electricity bills have crossed a certain threshold, solar is becoming a no-brainer.

Gaurav says he’s been happy with his installation. Other consumers I spoke to say the same.

Gaurav: So, to be very honest, I didn't pay any single penny from last seven months.

I'm happy since I don't need to pay any kind of electricity bill, and you know, I just need to pay a small EMI that you can have for 10 years, right. So there is nothing like that, like once you are going to install a solar system at your home.

So that would be a win-win situation, I would say, since you could be able to get the whole ROI within five years.

Kudrat (Host): Standing on a rooftop in India in 2026, the story of solar isn’t about technology anymore. The panels work. The sun shows up every day.

The real question is: does it make financial sense for you?

For people like Gaurav, the answer is yes. High bills, subsidies, and easy loans turn solar into a no-brainer.

But for millions of others, especially in rural India, the math doesn’t add up. When electricity is already cheap, solar stops looking like a solution, and starts looking like an unnecessary expense.

And that’s the paradox at the heart of India’s solar push.

The government wants rooftops full of panels. But as long as grid power stays this cheap, many will keep their wallets closed.

Until that gap resolves, India’s rooftop revolution may keep growing, just not as fast as policymakers hope.

Kudrat (Host): That's all for today. You just heard The Signal Brief. We don't do hot takes. Instead, we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends. The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

To check out the rest of our work, go to www.thecore.in.

If you have feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Write to us at feedback@thecore.in or you can write to me personally at kudrat@thecore.in.

Thank you for listening.