Govt mandates all rooftop solar inverters under PM scheme to connect to national servers
Rooftop solar inverters
installed under the PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana (PMSG: MBY) will be required to mandatorily connect to
national servers
and use machine-to-machine (M2M) SIM-based communication protocol, the
Ministry of New and Renewable Energy
(MNRE) has said in a compliance order issued to all stakeholders.
The PMSG: MBY scheme targets installation of rooftop solar (RTS) systems in one crore households with a total capacity of 30 gigawatts (GW). The ministry has said integration of such a large number of RTS plants introduces grid stability and
cybersecurity challenges
, especially due to inverters transmitting data outside India or interacting with third-party servers.
'To ensure secure and reliable data transmission, all inverter communication devices/dongles/data loggers deployed under the scheme shall have Machine-to-Machine (M2M) SIM communication protocol,' MNRE said in the memorandum dated July 21.
The ministry added that inverter modules transmitting sensitive data to servers outside India threaten national energy sovereignty and increase the risk of unauthorised control. It further stated that third-party communication could be exploited to manipulate inverter operations, potentially disrupting power generation and grid operations.
'In this regard, multiple rounds of deliberation have been done with major stakeholders to implement a framework to track generation benefits of RTS installations as well as for the centralisation of RTS data on a National Software Platform hosted on servers located in India and managed by MNRE or any other Government Agency,' the ministry said.
The MNRE is finalising a vendor-neutral open communication protocol along with security guidelines for data communication to enable real-time monitoring and control of inverters through the National Portal.
Integration testing of inverter communication devices will commence from September 1, 2025. 'A separate communication in this regard shall be issued shortly,' the ministry said.
Further, all Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) listed for supplying inverters under the scheme 'shall mandatorily connect their inverters directly to National Servers and Software managed by MNRE or any other agency designated by MNRE, with effective from the date to be notified,' it said.
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