The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has issued a new office memorandum on July 21st, 2025, introducing important compliance rules for inverters and communication devices used in rooftop solar installations under the PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana. This government scheme aims to install rooftop solar plants for one crore households across India with a total target capacity of 30 GW.
The Ministry has expressed concerns about the stability of the power grid and cybersecurity risks. These concerns are mainly related to inverter communication modules that send data to servers located outside India. According to the MNRE, this could be a threat to national energy security, as it may allow unauthorized control and reveal sensitive data about how much electricity is being produced and used. There is also a risk that third-party manufacturers could use this data to manipulate inverter functions, possibly causing power disruptions and creating instability in the grid.
To solve these problems, the MNRE consulted with several stakeholders and decided on a new approach. All data related to rooftop solar systems installed under the scheme will now be stored and managed on a National Software Platform. This platform will be hosted on servers based in India and controlled either by MNRE or another government-approved agency. The goal is to make sure that all monitoring and control activities related to inverters stay within Indian authorities, ensuring better security and management.
As part of this new compliance framework, the Ministry has made it clear that all inverter communication devices—such as dongles and data loggers—must use Machine-to-Machine (M2M) SIM communication protocol. This is to ensure secure and stable data transmission. MNRE is also working on a set of guidelines that will be based on open and vendor-neutral communication protocols. These guidelines will help standardize how data is shared and secured across systems connected to the National Portal. They are expected to be ready for testing from September 1st, 2025, and a separate notice about this will be released soon.
All inverter manufacturers supplying devices under the scheme must connect their products to the national servers managed by MNRE or its authorized agency. The date from which this becomes mandatory will be announced later. These steps are aimed at making India’s rooftop solar program more self-reliant, secure, and transparent.
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