Is that subsidy figure still current? How to verify solar scheme numbers before you rely on them

Every week we take calls from people quoting subsidy numbers we can't recognise — a "90% government subsidy" from a YouTube thumbnail, a state top-up that expired two budget cycles ago, a "registration fee" for a portal that has never charged one. The pattern isn't stupidity; it's that solar subsidy information ages badly and the internet never deletes anything.

Here is the verification habit we recommend to every buyer, whether or not they ever work with us.

The hierarchy of sources

Treat information sources like a court treats evidence:

1. The official portal is the ruling. For residential rooftop solar, that is pmsuryaghar.gov.in — CFA slabs, process, empanelled vendors. For farm solar, pmkusum.mnre.gov.in and your state nodal agency. For net-metering rules, your DISCOM's published regulations.
2. MNRE notifications and press releases are the record. Scheme changes arrive as dated documents. A rate without a notification behind it is a rumour.
3. Everything else — including this site — is commentary. Useful for understanding mechanisms, never authoritative on today's numbers. We publish our figures with dates and caveats precisely because commentary goes stale.

Three checks that take ten minutes

Check the CFA slab directly. The current structure — ₹30,000/kW for the first 2 kW, ₹18,000 for the third, ₹78,000 cap — has been stable since the scheme launched in February 2024, but it is MNRE's to revise. The portal's calculator and scheme pages state the operative figures. If a seller quotes you a different subsidy, ask them to show you where the portal says so.

Date-stamp any state top-up claim. State incentives change far more often than the central scheme — budgets lapse, policies get renotified, top-ups get absorbed into central schemes (Gujarat's earlier Surya Gujarat programme is the canonical example). Any state-subsidy claim should come with a notification date. No date, no belief.

Assume fees are fake until proven otherwise. The national portal charges nothing to register or apply. PM-KUSUM applications go through official state channels, also without "registration fees" — MNRE has repeatedly warned about fake KUSUM portals collecting payments. The legitimate costs in solar are the system itself and any professional services you knowingly hire; a surprise fee to access a government scheme is a scam signature.

Why sellers' numbers skew stale

Rarely malice, mostly incentive: an old, higher state subsidy makes a quote look better; a vague "up to 60% subsidised" closes faster than a slab table; and marketing pages outlive the schemes they describe because nobody is paid to take them down. The correction costs you ten minutes at the source. The failure to correct can cost a project's worth of disappointment.

What we do on our own pages

Since we're commentary too, our discipline is: mechanisms stated confidently, numbers stated with dates and a pointer to the source that owns them, and amber "being verified" flags where we're not certain a figure is current. When our page and the portal disagree, the portal wins — and we say so on the page.

Want your specific entitlement checked against current sources? The eligibility check is free and comes back within two working days.