More than 432,000 households are projected to no longer face the burden of monthly electricity bills, thanks to the installation of rooftop solar projects under the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana.
According to a report from the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy concerning the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy’s (MNRE) budget for FY25, a total of 790,000 rooftop installations have been completed over the past decade, with 900,000 of those occurring in the last year alone. Remarkably, 48% of these households now enjoy zero electricity bills.
During their oral presentation to the panel on February 25, 2025, MNRE representatives indicated that the number of households benefiting from the program is expected to rise, as the initiative’s reach has expanded to 1 million households, a milestone announced earlier this week.
As of February 25, there have been approximately 17.2 million registrations, with 4.584 million applications submitted and installations completed in 905,000 households. The Ministry has already disbursed subsidies to around 600,000 households’ bank accounts and has introduced a provision for incentives aimed at distribution companies (Discoms), with ₹2,000 crore allocated for this purpose.
To facilitate the program, 12,257 vendors have been registered, and technical feasibility requirements have been waived for installations up to 10 kilowatts for Discoms.
For FY26, the initiative has received a budget of ₹20,000 crore to ensure the completion of 3.5 million installations, corresponding to roughly 10.5 gigawatts of capacity. Although the Ministry had initially aimed to install solar projects on the rooftops of 2.5 million households in FY25—which ends this month—it now anticipates completing about 1.2 million projects by March 31, 2025.
The PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana aims to solarize 10 million households by providing up to 300 units of free electricity each month through rooftop solar installations. The government has allocated approximately ₹75,000 crore for this initiative, which is scheduled for implementation by FY27.
These 10 million installations are expected to generate around 100 billion units of electricity and contribute to a reduction of 720 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
