The subsidy is credited to your bank account typically thirty to forty-five days after your DISCOM inspects and commissions the system. That is the answer most people are looking for. But the full journey from first application to money in hand is considerably longer, and knowing the real shape of it prevents a lot of anxiety.
Here is the sequence, with realistic timings.
Registration on the national portal is immediate. You create an account at pmsuryaghar.gov.in with your consumer number, mobile, Aadhaar and bank details.
Feasibility approval from your DISCOM takes roughly one week to a month. This varies by state and by how complete your documents are. Additional site inspection or document corrections can extend it. This step must happen before installation, not after.
Choosing an installer and scheduling work is on your timeline, not the government's. Getting two or three quotes from portal-registered vendors is worth the extra week or two it adds.
Installation itself is usually one to three days for a typical residential system. The physical work is the fastest part of the entire process, which surprises people.
Net metering application and meter installation is often where the real wait sits. Your installer files the application and the DISCOM schedules the meter change. This can take several weeks depending on local workload.
DISCOM inspection and commissioning follows. An official inspects the installation and, if satisfied, commissions it. The inspection report is then uploaded to the portal. Nothing moves financially until this upload happens.
Subsidy credit arrives roughly thirty to forty-five days after that upload, by direct benefit transfer to your Aadhaar-linked account.
Adding it up, a realistic end-to-end timeline is two to four months from first registration to subsidy in your account, with most of the variability sitting in DISCOM processing rather than anything you control.
The cash flow implication matters. The subsidy arrives after commissioning, not upfront. You will generally need to fund the full system cost first and receive the subsidy afterwards. Some installers offer arrangements around this and some banks structure loans accordingly, but do not assume it. Ask explicitly how subsidy timing is handled in your case before signing, because assuming it will offset your first payment can leave you short by a lakh or more.
If financing helps, there is a collateral-free loan facility of up to Rs 2 lakh at around seven per cent through several public sector banks. On a Rs 1.3 lakh loan over five years the EMI is roughly Rs 2,600 a month, which for many households is less than the electricity bill the system replaces.
If it has been considerably longer than forty-five days since commissioning. The portal has application tracking, and the toll-free helpline on 15555 can tell you where the file is stuck. The most common causes of delay at this final stage are bank account name mismatches and Aadhaar linking problems, both of which are worth checking proactively rather than waiting.
One thing worth doing at the start. Confirm with your installer, in writing, which steps they handle and which are yours. Feasibility application, net metering liaison and commissioning coordination are sometimes excluded from a quotation, and discovering that halfway through adds weeks.
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Last updated 27 July 2026 · Reviewed by the RenSetu team