MANY MINDEDIndia put 1.9 million households on a zero electricity bill
1.9M households · their monthly electricity bill is now zero under net metering · installedmeasured · pv magazine, 2026-08-05, reporting MNRE figures for PM Surya Ghar — Source states "nearly 1.9 million households are now reporting zero electricity bills" out of 5M+ households and 14.8 GW commissioned; annual left null because no single published average residential
India's Ministry of New and Renewable Energy reported this week that PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana has commissioned 14.8 GW of rooftop solar across more than 5 million households. Nearly 1.9 million of those households now report a zero electricity bill.
The scheme launched on 13 February 2024 with a target of one crore — 10 million homes — by March 2027. It is roughly halfway, with twenty months to run.
The total is not the interesting number. The rate is. Installations ran at about 16,328 a day in July 2026. In October 2025 the figure was 5,038 a day. That is a 3.2x acceleration in nine months, on a programme already two years old — the reverse of the usual subsidy pattern, where the easiest adopters go first and the rate decays behind them.
Two mechanisms are doing the work, and neither of them is a technology.
The first is that the money moves directly. INR 280.24 billion of the INR 750.21 billion programme has been paid out through India's Direct Benefit Transfer system, into the household's own bank account rather than through a utility or a contractor. A subsidy that arrives as cash removes the financing step that normally kills residential solar for anyone without capital.
The second is that the meter runs both ways. More than 1.2 million households earned a combined INR 4.21 billion selling surplus power back to the grid in FY2024-25. The roof stopped being an expense and started being a small income.
This is why it matters here. The best receipt this movement has is the solar module price curve, down roughly 99.6% since 1976, which we publish at manyminded.com/curve/solarModule. The argument this site keeps making is that a finished cost curve eventually stops being a chart and becomes a bill that isn't there. This is what that looks like on arrival. Not a demo, not a pilot, not a 2035 projection: 1.9 million monthly statements that read zero.
Now the part that changes what the number means.
A zero bill is a net-metering result, not free electricity. Exports offset imports across the billing period. The household still needs the grid, as a battery and as a backstop in a bad week. Change the netting rules and the bill comes back.
It is also subsidised, at up to 40% of system cost. The bill reached zero partly because the public paid part of it in advance.
And the distribution is contested. Down To Earth argued in April that the scheme favours households that already hold clear title, a concrete roof, a smartphone and cash on hand, which excludes tin-roofed rural labour and residents of informal settlements. Every net-metered home also shifts a share of fixed grid costs onto the customers who stay fully on the grid, who are on average poorer. Maharashtra and Karnataka have already capped net-metering credits and brought in time-of-day tariffs. MNRE publishes no beneficiary demographics, so whether the subsidy is reaching the bottom income quintiles cannot be checked by anyone outside the ministry.
Three things to watch: whether 16,328 a day survives the harder half of the target; whether more states trim net metering, which is the exact mechanism by which a zero bill becomes a small bill again; and whether MNRE ever publishes who is getting the money.
One more thing, from elsewhere in today's feed. The US is weighing a minimum import price on polysilicon, and Kunming has suspended 18.33 GW of ingot capacity behind a rule demanding 3 GW retired for every 1 GW built. The countries that manufacture solar are moving to put a floor under its price in the same week that a country installing it took 1.9 million bills to zero. Both are true. Only one of them is a cost curve.
ENERGY sits about a third of the way to free by our count, and this did not move the destination. It moved 1.9 million invoices. We publish the curve, the sources and the caveats, counted honestly. Step inside.
Source: pv magazine · 2026-08-05