PM Surya Ghar: what ₹78,000 actually covers

The single most common question we get is whether ₹78,000 is what you will actually receive. For a 3 kW system on a home you own, with a sanctioned connection in your name, the answer is usually yes. The confusion starts because the number is fixed to system size, while almost every conversation about solar starts from the electricity bill.

PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana pays a central financial assistance amount against the capacity you install, verified after commissioning. Your bill decides what size makes sense for you. The subsidy then follows that size through a slab table. Two homes with identical bills can receive different amounts, and two homes with very different bills can receive exactly the same.

How the slabs work

The residential structure is straightforward once you see it as a ladder that stops climbing. The first kilowatt earns the most, the second earns the same again, the third adds a smaller amount, and after that the central assistance does not increase at all.

A 5 kW system receives the same ₹78,000 as a 3 kW system. That is not a reason to under-size: the extra two kilowatts still generate, still offset tariff, and still pay back — they simply pay back without help. It is a reason to be precise about where your own break-even sits, which is the arithmetic the calculator on this site runs.

When the money actually arrives

The subsidy is a reimbursement, not a discount at the point of sale. You pay the full system cost, the installation is commissioned, the discom inspects and issues the net-metering certificate, and the assistance is then credited to the bank account registered on the national portal. In our experience across UP and Delhi that credit lands somewhere between thirty and forty-five days after inspection, assuming nothing on the file needs correcting.

The four documents that hold applications up

Policy rejections are rare. Documentation rejections are common, and they are all preventable. Nearly every file we have had to resubmit failed on one of four points.

What it does to payback

For a typical 3 kW system in Uttar Pradesh at current installed prices, the central assistance removes roughly a third of the capital cost. On our own commissioned-system data, that moves break-even from a little over six years to close to four, before any state-level incentive is applied.

The subsidy does not make solar worth doing. It makes the first four years easier — the twenty-one after that were always the point.

The twenty-five year performance warranty on the panels is the number worth anchoring to. Central assistance is a one-time event; tariff escalation is not. Every year that grid rates move up, the value of the units you generate moves with them, and that compounding does more for the total than the subsidy ever will.

Applying without the paperwork

RePrime files the packet on your behalf as part of the installation: portal registration, vendor mapping, commissioning report, net-meter coordination with the discom, and the subsidy claim itself. You provide the four documents above once, and you receive a tracked status against each stage in the app rather than a phone number to chase.