New Delhi, July 23 (IANS) A total of 15.45 lakh households in the country and 5.23 lakh households in Gujarat have benefitted from rooftop solar installation, including that of rural areas (as of July 14), the Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

One of the components of the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana, launched in February 2024, is the development of Model Solar Village in each district of the country.

“An amount of Rs 800 crore has been allocated for this component with a provision of central financial assistance of Rs one crore per model village,” Shripad Yesso Naik, Minister of State for Power and New and Renewable Energy, informed in a written reply in the Lok Sabha.

In addition, under the component ‘Incentives to Local Bodies’, the scheme has provision of providing an incentive at Rs 1,000 per rooftop solar installation in the respective jurisdiction of the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs) at the Gram Panchayat level, he informed.

The scheme targets to achieve rooftop solar installations in one crore households in the residential sector by providing central financial assistance.

It is demand-driven, wherein all residential consumers in the country, including those in rural areas having a grid-connected electricity connection of the local DISCOM, can avail the benefits by applying on the National Portal of the scheme, said the minister.

The government has taken several measures to make the scheme more effective, like online process from registration to disbursal of subsidy directly in to the bank account of the residential consumer through National Portal, availability of collateral free loan from nationalised banks at concessional interest rate of repo-rate plus 50 bps — 6 per cent per annum for the present with tenure of 10 years — and simplified regulatory approval process by waiving technical feasibility requirement and introducing auto load enhancement up to 10 kW.

The scheme aims to bring solar power to one crore households by March 2027.

–IANS

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