Assam's regulator refuses to let APDCL stop connecting rooftop solar while its net-metering petition is heard

The Assam Electricity Regulatory Commission has told Assam Power Distribution Company Ltd that it may not stop connecting rooftop solar while it argues that rooftop solar costs too much. In an interim order following a hearing, the commission directed the utility to keep processing every rooftop application under the Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules 2020, its own existing regulations, the Assam Solar Generation Promotion Policy 2025 and the PM Surya Ghar scheme guidelines, and not to delay, reject or hold applications pending because of the utility's own petition to change the rules.

The petition itself was refused, at least for now. According to trade reporting on the order, APDCL had asked the commission to cap rooftop systems at 100 per cent of a consumer's connected load or contract demand, to restrict net metering to residential consumers with connected loads up to 10 kWp, to stop paying for surplus electricity at the end of the annual settlement period, and to reclassify that surplus as inadvertent injection carrying no compensation. [UNVERIFIED: the four requested amendments are as reported by SolarQuarter on 11 August 2026; the order text was not read.]

The number the utility brought, and the number it asked to abolish

APDCL's case rested on an estimated annual financial impact of about Rs 88.98 crore. The reported breakdown puts Rs 71.62 crore of that under unit-adjustment losses and Rs 7.35 crore under estimated surplus payouts for FY2025-26, across 1,04,624 installations. For FY2024-25 the reported payout was Rs 84.05 lakh to 6,707 households.

Those figures are worth sitting with, because the thing the utility asked to abolish is the small part of its own total. Surplus payments are roughly eight per cent of the impact APDCL claims. On the reported FY2025-26 numbers the average works out at a little over Rs 700 per installation per year, and on the FY2024-25 numbers at about Rs 1,250 per household. Both averages are this publication's arithmetic on the reported totals, not figures from the order, and the 1,04,624 count appears to be installations rather than households actually receiving a settlement payment, which would push the real per-household figure higher. [UNVERIFIED: every figure in this section comes from a single trade report and was not confirmed against the order. The reported components also do not sum to the reported total, leaving roughly Rs 10 crore unaccounted for.]

What that leaves is a petition whose headline number is driven by unit-adjustment losses, attached to a request to end a payment averaging a few hundred rupees a year per roof.

Why the commission sent it back

AERC did not rule on the merits. It found the financial analysis incomplete, and the stated gap is the familiar one in every net-metering proceeding: the utility counted the costs and not the offsets. Reporting on the order says the commission found APDCL had not adequately considered time-of-day variation in power purchase costs, savings from daytime solar generation, or avoided purchases during peak periods. The commission is reported to have said that any proposal to restrict rooftop capacity or discontinue payment for surplus must rest on a transparent and comprehensive cost-benefit assessment. [UNVERIFIED: this reasoning is trade-press paraphrase of the order, not quotation from it.]

APDCL was directed to file a revised financial impact study, an assessment of the operational impact of peer-to-peer energy trading, and a compliance report on affidavit by 26 August 2026. It was also told to operationalise, immediately, deemed acceptance and automatic load enhancement for rooftop systems up to 10 kW.

That last direction is the one with teeth. Deemed acceptance converts a silent application into an approved one, which removes the cheapest tactic available to a reluctant distribution utility, which is to do nothing.

Why it matters

An interim order is usually the least interesting document in a regulatory file. Here it is the most important one, because of what the alternative would have been. A distribution utility that stops processing applications while its petition is heard wins the argument regardless of how the petition is eventually decided. Applications expire, installers move to other states, subsidy deadlines pass, and by the time a final order arrives the queue it would have governed has dispersed. Refusing to let the processing stop is the only direction that preserves the question.

The substance of the dispute is the one every rooftop programme reaches at scale, and India is reaching it now. Net metering was designed when exported units were rounding errors. Once household generation is large enough to show up in a distribution utility's power purchase arithmetic, the utility's incentive is to reclassify the export as a nuisance, and the language proposed here does exactly that: inadvertent injection is a term for power the grid received and will not pay for. The regulator's answer, that you may not price the cost side alone, is the correct answer and an unusually explicit one.

The forum matters as much as the ruling. Decisions like this are made in state commission proceedings that English-language trade press covers rarely and national coverage never, which means the rooftop programme is being settled in twenty-eight places at once, mostly unobserved. The central scheme sets targets and pays subsidies. The state commission decides whether the electricity you generate is worth anything once it leaves your meter.

India context

The Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules 2020 are the national floor that AERC is enforcing here, which is why the order reads as an application of existing law rather than as new state policy. APDCL told a State Advisory Committee meeting in April 2026 that Assam had completed roughly 80,000 rooftop installations, ranked eighth nationally, against a state target of one lakh households. The 1,04,624 figure cited in the petition for FY2025-26 is larger than that April count, which is consistent with continued growth but has not been reconciled against a single source. [NEEDS DATA: Assam's installed rooftop capacity in MW, and the number of applications pending with APDCL when the interim order issued.]

What is still unknown

Whether APDCL filed the revised study, the peer-to-peer assessment and the compliance affidavit by 26 August 2026. No reporting on compliance was found.

The case or petition number, and the order text. AERC's website, aerc.gov.in, failed certificate verification on 20 September 2026 and could not be read.

What APDCL's substantive petition is finally asking for, as distinct from the four amendments it sought on an interim basis.

Why an assessment of peer-to-peer energy trading appears in a net-metering compliance direction at all. Nothing in the available reporting explains the connection.

Sources

Mercom India, 10 August 2026: https://www.mercomindia.com/assam-regulator-directs-discom-to-follow-existing-rooftop-solar-rules

SolarQuarter, 11 August 2026, which carries the order date of 5 August 2026, the 28 July 2026 hearing, the four requested amendments and all financial figures: https://solarquarter.com/2026/08/11/aerc-directs-apdcl-to-continue-rooftop-solar-applications-under-existing-net-metering-rules-in-assam/

MVA Pulse, Aditya Pathre, 11 August 2026: https://www.mvapulse.com/assam-regulator-upholds-rooftop-solar-rules-for-apdcl/

The Sentinel, 13 April 2026, for the installed base and state target as disclosed by APDCL: https://www.sentinelassam.com/topheadlines/assam-ranks-8th-in-india-for-rooftop-solar-installations-eyes-6th-spot-with-80000-units-completed

Assam Electricity Regulatory Commission (not reachable; TLS certificate verification failed on 20 September 2026): https://aerc.gov.in/