A massive campaign to promote ‘PM- Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana’

Visakhapatnam: As part of promoting and implementing government of India’s scheme ‘PM-Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana’ across the State of Andhra Pradesh, Minister for Energy Gottipati Ravi Kumar directed AP Power utilities to implement it on a large scale, involving public, government departments and stakeholders and make the scheme successful.

During a meeting with APEPDCL, the Minister released a poster and leaflets and said that the Centre aims at installing rooftop solar plants in 1 crore households, with a total financial outlay of Rs 75,021 crore.

“The scheme will help provide free/low-cost electricity to 1 crore households up to 300 units of electricity per month by installation of rooftop solar and boost local economy and employment generation along with enhanced energy security”, Ravi Kumar said. Welcoming the Gol initiative, the energy minister directed power utilities to create awareness on the scheme for fast track penetration among consumers across the state.

The energy minister stated the under the guidance of Chief Minister Sri Nara Chandrababu Naidu, the state government is

committed to enhance renewable energy sources like solar, wind to meet the increasing energy demand and achieve the national target to accelerate renewable energy capacity with a target to achieve 500 GW of installed electric capacity from non-fossil sources by 2030.

He appealed to all electricity consumers to take advantage of the scheme that would benefit households by availing a subsidy for installing solar panels and a loan facility at low interest rates without any collateral. “This initiative helps to reduce carbon emissions, contribute to environment conservation, and save natural resources for future generations. It allows the beneficiary to save electricity bills by installing solar panels and the free electricity provided by the government. Also, the beneficiaries can earn money through the sale of solar power to DISCOMS,” said the energy minister.

Stating that APEPDCL would achieve the objectives of the scheme, Special Chief Secretary Energy, K Vijayanand, Chairman and Managing Director of APEPDCL Immadi Prudhvi Tej said implementation methodology and said that any eligible consumer with valid customer service number with a distribution company shall avail the benefits of the scheme only through the PM Surya Ghar portal.

APEPDCL CMD has requested all the district collectors to promote the scheme extensively on raising consumer awareness among residential consumers, communicating the PM Surya Ghar guidelines. Further, nodal officers were appointed at corporate office level circle wise for monitoring the PM Surya Ghar Scheme, CMD APEPDCL informed.

For large scale implementation of the scheme, the APEPDCL is going to conduct circle and district level awareness programmes for the outreach of PM Surya Ghar Scheme. Special drives are programmed by the field officers for registration of applications under the scheme along with door-to-door campaigning with spot billing meter readers, said the CMD of APEPDCL.