New Delhi: More than 25 lakh households so far have applied for rooftop solar installations under the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana (PMSGMBY), launched in February this year, but only 23.8 percent of these requests have been approved, according to data submitted by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) in response to a parliamentary question Wednesday.
The PMSGMBY, which aims to benefit 1 crore homes, helps households adopt solar energy by providing subsidies of up to 60 percent of the cost for rooftop installations.
Responding to the query by Trinamool Congress MP Sajda Ahmad, MNRE Minister of State Shripad Yesso Naik gave a state-wise breakdown of the total number of registrations, applications and installations under the scheme as of 21 November.
The data showed that a total of 2,582,535 people had completed full applications. However, the number of beneficiaries stood at just 616,019—less than a quarter of the applicants.
Independent experts said the process from registration to installation involved multiple steps such as site visits, vendor selection, installation, net metering application and approvals.
“This may be the potential reason for a lower conversion rate of 24 percent from applications into actual installations,” said Bhawna Tyagi, programme lead at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), is a Delhi-based climate think tank.
According to the data shared by Naik, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Punjab have the highest conversion rates (the percentage of applications leading to actual installations)—90.65 percent, 60.13 percent, 41.84 percent, 38.29 percent and 36.49 percent respectively. Among Union territories, Puducherry ranked first with 44.19 percent while Delhi was fourth at just under 29 percent.
According to this data, the top five states that recorded the highest absolute numbers of rooftop solar plant installations were Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Gujarat led by a significant margin, having installed 2,81,769 systems. Maharashtra was a distant second with 1,20,696 installations, roughly two-thirds of Gujarat’s total.
The data indicates that there are significant challenges even in states with a high level of interest in the scheme. Despite having the highest number of applicants in the country at 5,34,529, Uttar Pradesh was in third place with 51,313 installations–a conversion rate of only 9.6 percent. Similarly, Assam, with 2,65,683 applicants, saw only 2,659 installations, translating to a mere 1 percent conversion rate.
Tyagi said that increasing deployment would require more efforts at the state level through targeted consumer awareness campaigns, streamlining the net metering timelines and processes, capacity building of discoms, ensuring the availability of net meters and DCR modules to service the demand and a robust vendor ecosystem.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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There is not a single word about West Bengal in this article. It is for kind information that so many people have already been registered with the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojna and installed the system through registered enlisted vendors. All they are wairing very eagerly to connect the system with grid by the DISCOM since July’24. It is ill fated fact that the DISCOM is not responding since then causing consumers are in trouble as they invested a lot to it. Hope MNRE kindly take necessary steps to do best shortly.