Solar for Housing Societies — the ₹18,000/kW Subsidy Explained

A housing society’s solar subsidy runs on different terms from an individual home’s, and RWAs researching it often find the two schemes’ numbers conflated in casual explanations.

The rate: ₹18,000 per kW, not the home scale

Under PM Surya Ghar, a group housing society or RWA can claim ₹18,000 per kW for a rooftop system that powers common facilities — lighting, lifts, pumps, EV charging points — up to 500 kW for the society as a whole. This is a flat per-kW rate, unlike the home scheme’s tiered ₹30,000 / ₹60,000 / ₹78,000-cap structure for individual residences.

The 500 kW limit includes what residents already installed

One detail that catches societies out: the 500 kW ceiling is inclusive of any rooftop systems individual residents have already installed on their own flats within the same society, not a separate allowance for the common areas alone. A society weighing a common-area system should account for what residents have already claimed individually before assuming the full 500 kW is available.

Common-area load is a genuinely good candidate for solar

Lifts, corridor and stairwell lighting, common-area pumps and security systems typically run through the day as well as at night, and none of it benefits from an individual resident’s free-units allowance the way a flat’s own connection might. A society-wide system offsetting this shared load is often a clear win independent of any single resident’s personal usage pattern.

Who applies, and how it differs from an individual claim

The society or RWA applies for the common-area subsidy as its own process, separate from any resident applying individually for their own flat under the home scheme. The two applications do not compete against each other’s allowance — a resident’s individual system and the society’s common-area system are assessed as distinct claims, within the combined 500 kW ceiling noted above.

Getting started

We can size a common-area system from your society’s shared electricity bills and tell you the subsidy, net cost and payback before you take a proposal to your RWA committee. See our full housing society solar page for the complete picture.