One crore Indian homes signed up for rooftop solar. About 48 lakh have it.
Rooftop solar more than doubled in six months, four-fifths of it on houses, and an installer's order book now decides who gets panels.
More than a crore Indian households have put their name down for subsidised rooftop solar. About 48 lakh of them have panels, on the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy's count in late July.
Installations are running faster than they ever have. Indian roofs took 6.6 GW of new solar in the first half of 2026, against 2.8 GW in the same months of 2025, on figures from Mercom India Research, a firm that tracks the sector.
Roofs were close to a quarter of all the new solar India built in that half. The country added 27 GW in all.
Houses took 84 per cent of the rooftop additions in the April-to-June quarter, and 82 per cent in the quarter before. Industry, offices and government buildings shared the rest.
Roofs and households are counted separately
The ministry's count of installed systems sits below its count of households. By 22 July 2026 it listed 39.72 lakh rooftop systems under PM Surya Ghar, the central subsidy scheme for household solar. One system on a shared building can serve several flats, which is why the household figure runs ahead.
Registering on the portal is the first step and the quickest. After that a household picks an approved installer, the installer builds, the local power company inspects and connects the system, and the subsidy is paid into the household's bank account.
Sixty-six installers can no longer take new work
In an advisory reported on 26 August 2026 the ministry named 66 approved installers holding more applications than they had shown they could build, and moved to take them off the list consumers choose from. They keep access to finish jobs already agreed.
The firms have 30 days from being notified to clear the backlog or stay off the list for longer. The ministry also told installers not to sit on a household's application for more than 60 days without good reason.
About Rs 69,000 of central money per roof
The scheme was approved in February 2024 with an outlay of Rs 75,021 crore. The ministry said in June that it had paid out Rs 22,750 crore of that.
What 6.6 GW looks like on roofs (our arithmetic): the ministry's own June figures, 12 GW across about 33 lakh systems, put the average subsidised system at about 3.6 kilowatts. At that size, half a year of 6.6 GW is roughly 18 lakh rooftops. The same figures put the central subsidy at close to Rs 69,000 a system, against a maximum of Rs 78,000.
The December target needs 5.5 lakh homes a month
Pralhad Joshi, the minister for new and renewable energy, said in June that 75 lakh households would have rooftop solar by December 2026.
Reaching that from the late-July count needs about 5.5 lakh households a month, by our arithmetic on the ministry's figures. Its strongest month so far, May 2026, delivered 3.16 lakh installations.
A household that buys panels owns them. When they go up is settled by an approved installer's order book and by the local power company's inspection, and the portal is where that wait is recorded.
The subsidy and the money are in place; what decides who gets panels is whether an approved installer has room for the job.
What we could not confirm
- How long have the households that registered and have no panels been waiting?
- What share of the 6.6 GW sends power back to the grid, and what share is used in the building?
- Which states drove the April-to-June surge? Mercom has published state shares for the first quarter only.
The document
Mercom India Research, India Rooftop Solar Market Report, Q2 and 1H 2026, reported on 31 August 2026. The report sells for a fee and was not read: the capacity and segment figures above come from pv magazine's write-up of it and from Mercom's own published summary.
The scheme figures come from the ministry's statement of 5 June 2026 marking two years of PM Surya Ghar, and from official data reported by the Press Trust of India on 2 September 2026. The ministry's own release page returned an error, so that statement was read through two reproductions of it.
Sources
- pv magazine, "India adds 6.6 GW of rooftop solar in H1 2026", 31 August 2026: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/08/31/india-adds-6-6-gw-of-rooftop-solar-in-h1-2026/
- Mercom India, "India's rooftop solar installations surge by 125% YoY in Q1 2026": https://www.mercomindia.com/indias-rooftop-solar-installations-surge-by-125-yoy-in-q1-2026
- pv magazine India, residential share of Q1 2026 rooftop additions, 29 May 2026: https://www.pv-magazine-india.com/2026/05/29/residential-segment-accounts-for-82-of-indias-rooftop-solar-additions-in-q1-2026-mercom/
- Mercom India, India added 27 GW of solar in 1H 2026: https://www.mercomindia.com/daily-news-wrap-up-india-adds-27-gw-of-solar-in-1h-2026
- The Wire, carrying Press Trust of India, official PM Surya Ghar figures as of 22 July 2026 and the subsidy slabs, 2 September 2026: https://m.thewire.in/article/ptiprnews/pm-surya-ghar-yojana-2026-how-to-get-rs-78000-solar-subsidy-cut-your-electricity-bill
- Energetica India, report of the ministry's 5 June 2026 statement on two years of the scheme: https://www.energetica-india.net/news/75-lakh-households-targeted-for-rooftop-solar-installations-under-pm-surya-ghar-by-dec-2026-joshi
- Swarajya, report of the same statement, including the Rs 22,750 crore disbursal figure: https://swarajyamag.com/infrastructure/pm-surya-ghar-crosses-40-lakh-beneficiaries-as-india-targets-75-lakh-rooftop-solar-homes-by-december-2026
- Energetica India, the ministry's advisory on 66 underperforming vendors, 26 August 2026: https://www.energetica-india.net/news/mnre-advises-pm-surya-ghar-vendors-to-clear-applications-within-60-days
- Press Information Bureau, "75 Lakh Households Targeted for Rooftop Solar Installations by December 2026", 5 June 2026, which returned HTTP 403 when fetched: https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2268992
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