How to apply for the PM Surya Ghar Yojana as a solar EPC

To apply for the PM Surya Ghar Yojana as an EPC, you register your company on pmsuryaghar.gov.in as an implementing agency, then get empanelled separately with each DISCOM whose area you want to serve. Both approvals have to be in place before a customer in that area can go through you. Once you are live, the customer's application itself follows the same documentation path as any other rooftop project — proof of roof ownership, the electricity bill, the sanctioned load. What is specific to PM Surya Ghar is the panel requirement and the point in the project where the subsidy is actually claimed, which is later than most EPCs expect.

Registering with MNRE and each DISCOM before you can apply for PM Surya Ghar Yojana

Registration on the national portal is free and asks for proof your company exists as a legal entity, evidence of financial standing, and the technical qualifications of your installation team. That gets you onto the portal, not into a customer's area. Empanelment with the DISCOM covering that area is a second, separate approval, run on the DISCOM's own timeline rather than MNRE's. An EPC guide to the programme puts national portal activation at roughly one to two weeks and DISCOM empanelment at two to six weeks depending on the state. Until both are done, a customer's PIN code is not serviceable through you, no matter how complete the rest of their file is.

What the customer applies for, and what the subsidy actually pays

The central subsidy is ₹30,000 per kW for the first 2 kW and ₹18,000 for the third, which works out to ₹30,000 for a 1 kW system, ₹60,000 for 2 kW, and a cap of ₹78,000 for 3 kW or larger. That was the structure the Cabinet approved in February 2024, and it applies to residential systems only, paid by direct transfer to the customer's Aadhaar-linked account. Commercial and industrial roofs on the same building do not qualify under this scheme, even if the residential portion does. The customer declares system size, roof type and consumption on the portal, and the DISCOM checks the bill against its own records for arrears before eligibility is confirmed.

The panels have to be on the ALMM list, or none of this matters

PM Surya Ghar requires modules from MNRE's Approved List of Models and Manufacturers, verified through the DCR portal run by the National Institute of Solar Energy. Non-listed modules are usually cheaper, which is exactly why they show up on a quote for a customer who has not decided whether they want the subsidy. If that customer later decides they do, and the modules are already on order, you are either eating the cost of a swap or losing the subsidy. Specify ALMM-listed modules from the first quote on any project where the subsidy is even a possibility, and confirm the exact model number against the current list before you invoice, not after.

The subsidy is filed at commissioning, not at the start

The instinct is to treat PM Surya Ghar as paperwork you clear early and forget. It is the opposite. The subsidy cannot be claimed until the DISCOM has confirmed the system is installed and the net meter is commissioned, which happens near the end of the project, not the beginning. The DCR certificate and the subsidy submission itself are filed at that point, once the DISCOM's own inspection and sign-off are done. Everything before commissioning (document verification, the loan stage if there is one, the DISCOM's net-meter approval) has to be complete first. Treating the subsidy claim as a late-stage task with its own deadline, rather than something handled in month one, is the difference between catching a slip and hearing about it from the customer.

The subsidy will not fund your material dispatch

Because the claim cannot go in until after commissioning, the money arrives well after panels have left the warehouse. Vendors have publicly reported disbursement running slower than the programme's stated targets. If your payment schedule needs most of the project value collected before material dispatch, that share has to come from the customer or their financing, never from a subsidy that has not been claimed yet. Brief the customer on this before they sign. The subsidy reduces what they owe you overall, but it does not arrive in time to fund the 10/70/20 schedule most EPCs run on.

A loan on the same project waits on the DISCOM too

Some customers combine PM Surya Ghar with a loan. The bank will usually not release funds until the DISCOM's approval is confirmed, because the loan amount is sized against a system cost that assumes the subsidy comes through. That means the loan stage inherits the DISCOM's timeline as well as its own: the same approval both are waiting on. Tell the customer this up front. It is not a delay you caused, and it is not one you can shorten by chasing the bank instead of the DISCOM.

How Solar Spine keeps a subsidy claim from going quiet

Solar Spine tracks PM Surya Ghar as two tasks, DCR certificate and PMSG submission, that open the day a project enters the net-meter activation stage, after installation, at the point where commissioning happens. Each carries an internal due date of eighteen days, set by the product rather than by any published rule, and a further task to redeem the central subsidy opens once invoicing starts. A stage cannot advance while a task like this sits open, and an overdue one climbs one rung of the org chart every night until someone closes it. It shows up in the same due-today email at 9am as everything else on the project, so a director sees a stalled subsidy claim next to overdue collections rather than after the customer has already asked. Solar Spine does not file with the DISCOM for you — that part stays your team's work. It only keeps the task on someone's list and visible until it is closed.

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