CHENNAI: Over 3,500 rooftop solar applications under the centre’s PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana scheme are pending across Tamil Nadu, with nearly two-thirds of them stuck for more than 15 days, according to data from the Tamil Nadu Green Energy Corporation Limited (TNGECL) accessed by TNIE.
As of June 6, a total of 3,531 applications were pending, of which 2,211 had been waiting for over a fortnight. Some of them, officials said, were two to three months old. Chennai leads the backlog with 932 pending cases, followed by Coimbatore (395) and Madurai (191).
A senior TNGECL official told TNIE that as per the union government’s guidelines, consumers installing rooftop solar systems of up to 10 kilowatt (kW) are exempt from obtaining a feasibility report. Once the installation is completed, assistant engineers or assistant executive engineers inspect the system and approve it. Following approval, the existing electricity meter is replaced with a net meter.
As per the centre’s guidelines, there is no deadline to install rooftop solar panels after registration process under PM Surya Ghar scheme. TNGECL officials, however, said that a large share of pending applications belong to consumers who have completed registration on the portal but never proceeded with installation.
“Applications cannot be removed at the field level, only headquarters officials can delete them, so many applications have been sitting pending on the portal for months,” a senior official said. The official further urged the union government to introduce stage-wise deadlines after registration to help utilities clear the backlog.
Besides, staff shortages have added to the monitoring challenge. As against a state target of 3 lakh households, only 74,200 installations have been completed. On the supply side, vendors say the restriction on Chinese panel imports means a wait of nearly a month for domestically manufactured panels. They also flagged delays in net meter installation even after systems were commissioned, and frequent technical glitches on TNGECL servers as additional bottlenecks.