Your customer now has to approve your agreement before you install
MNRE has put the vendor-consumer agreement through the PM Surya Ghar portal for consumer approval, with the full installed cost entered and matched to your quote.
A change landed on 24 September that alters the order in which a residential job happens, and it will catch out any EPC whose quotation and agreement do not say the same thing.
What changed
MNRE has introduced a digital verification step on the PM Surya Ghar portal for the vendor-consumer agreement.
The flow now runs like this:
- The vendor uploads the agreement to the portal.
- The consumer is notified and reviews it.
- The consumer approves or rejects it.
- Installation details cannot be uploaded until the consumer has approved.
The vendor must also enter the total installation cost including taxes and other charges, and that figure is expected to match the quotation submitted at the feasibility stage where applicable. If the consumer rejects the agreement, the vendor can submit a revised one addressing their remarks. Changes to an already approved agreement need fresh consent through the portal.
Why MNRE has done this
Two problems, both familiar to anyone honest about this industry.
Price opacity. A customer quoted one number at the site visit and billed another, with the subsidy sometimes presented as a discount the vendor was granting rather than an entitlement the customer receives. Making the total installed cost a portal field, matched to the feasibility quotation, closes most of that.
Agreements nobody read. A signature collected on a doorstep at the end of a long sales conversation is not informed consent. Notifying the consumer separately, through the portal, and requiring an explicit approval, is.
If your business does neither of those things, this is paperwork. If any part of your funnel depends on either, this is a problem, and it is the right kind of problem to have solved for you.
What it changes operationally
Sequence. The agreement is now a gate before installation details, not a formality filed afterwards. Build it into your process at the right point or your jobs will stall between installation and documentation.
A new place to wait. The customer now has to act. Some will do it in an hour, some will sit on the notification for a week, and some will not understand what the message is. Add a step to your process: after uploading, call the customer, tell them what they will receive and what to press. That call is the difference between a day and a fortnight.
Your numbers have to agree. The quotation, the agreement and the portal entry must carry the same total. Any late change, a module substitution, extra structure height, a longer cable run, now needs the amount reconciled rather than absorbed quietly. Which of those costs get discovered late is in bill of materials mistakes that eat a signed job's margin.
Your agreement gets read. Write it so that it survives being read by a careful customer. Scope, exclusions, timeline, warranties, payment stages, and what happens if the DISCOM sanctions a smaller capacity.
The part that helps you
An approved agreement, on the government's portal, at the price you quoted, is protection.
It makes the "my neighbour got it cheaper" conversation shorter. It makes payment disputes rarer, because the agreed total is recorded somewhere neither party controls. And it pushes out the vendors whose model depends on the gap between the quoted number and the final bill, which is the competition that has been undercutting you.
Treat it as a selling point. Telling a customer that they will receive the agreement to review and approve themselves, before anything is installed, is a trust argument that costs you nothing and that a casual competitor will not have thought to make.
What to do this week
- Read your standard agreement again, imagining a suspicious customer reading it line by line.
- Make the totals match across quotation, agreement and portal, including taxes and every charge.
- Add the approval step to your process, with a call to the customer immediately after upload.
- Decide who owns it internally, because a step nobody owns is a step that stalls.
- Track time to approval for the next ten jobs, so you can quote a realistic timeline rather than a guess.
The wider sequence this now sits inside is in the net metering application, end to end.
The short version
- From 24 September 2026, the vendor-consumer agreement goes through the PM Surya Ghar portal for consumer approval.
- Installation details cannot be uploaded until the consumer approves. Rejection sends it back for revision, and changing an approved agreement needs fresh consent.
- Vendors must enter the total installed cost including taxes, matching the feasibility quotation.
- Expect a new waiting point. Call the customer right after uploading and tell them what to press.
- Make the quotation, the agreement and the portal figure agree, and write an agreement that survives being read.
- Sourced from trade coverage. Confirm the operational detail on the portal.
Sources
- MNRE mandates consumer approval for rooftop solar agreements, Indian Infrastructure, trade coverage
- PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana national portal, Government of India
- Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, for rooftop solar division circulars
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