It is well known that one of the factors for low and slow adoption of solar PV solution at households and SMEs is the upfront investment required from the customer’s end. If these customers could be helped with the financing, it can really change the adoption rate.

Typical customer financing would be of the form that the financer pays the solution implementer for the project upfront on behalf of the customer, the implementer delivers the solution to the customer and the customer pays back the financer in multiple installments. This will ease out the payment load on the customer, it will be a good investment with handsome returns for the financer and it will definitely be easily customer acquisition for the implementer.

This financing mechanism, if implemented at the household and SME level can do wonders to the solar PV users and the industry. These mechanism has started seeing light at the SME level but is still facing quite a lot of difficulties at the household level because of the weak legal structure in India which might very well be needed in case of unwanted defaults by the customers or in case of non-worthy solar PV system implementations which might put the lenders at risk.