Solar Insurance in India: What It Covers and Costs (2026)

A rooftop solar system is an expensive asset that you bolt to the outside of a building and leave exposed for 25 years. Hail, cyclone, lightning, flood, and theft all reach it. Most Indian owners never think about this until something breaks. Then they learn two uncomfortable things. The manufacturer warranty does not cover weather damage, and the home policy they assumed covered everything carries conditions they never read.

Solar insurance in India is not one product. It is a stack of covers that insurers bundle differently, sitting on a fire and perils base, and the gaps between those layers are where owners lose money. This guide covers what damages rooftop systems here, which policy answers which event, whether your householder policy extends to the array, how to set a sum insured, and where warranty stops and insurance starts.

Short version. Solar insurance in India means combining a fire and special perils base with burglary cover for theft, machinery breakdown cover for inverter failure, and, for commercial sites, business interruption. A standard home policy can cover a rooftop array as an additional structure, but only against its listed insured events. Warranty covers defects, not weather. Set the sum insured at replacement cost.

This article is general information, not insurance advice.

What can go wrong on an Indian rooftop

Indian rooftop losses cluster around a short list of causes, and most are environmental rather than mechanical. Weather drives the bulk of physical loss. Electrical events sit between insurance and warranty, which is why they cause the most arguments at claim time. Hail caused 27 percent of natural catastrophe and extreme weather solar losses by claim amount since 2019, according to AXIS Capital (2025), on global data.

The table compresses six different failure stories, and they behave differently at claim time.

• Storm and cyclone damage. Modules are rated for a mechanical wind load, but the rating means little if the structure or its anchoring gives way first. Ask the installer for the structure’s design wind speed and the fixing method for your roof type.
• Hail. Glass breakage or micro-cracks reduce a module’s output, and a cracked module in a string can pull the whole string down. A dated photograph and the module serial number make a hail claim much easier to settle.
• Fire and lightning. A loose or degraded DC connector can arc, and a direct or induced lightning strike can damage the inverter even when the panels survive. These sit across the fire policy, the breakdown cover and the warranty exclusions, which is why the next sections separate them.
• Theft. Modules, copper DC cable and earthing strips are portable and have resale value. Insurers read an open rooftop differently from a locked room, so confirm the burglary wording in writing.
• Falling objects and accidental damage. Tree branches, a collapsed water tank or debris from a neighbouring building are external events, but plain fire and perils cover may not list them. An all-risk form usually does.
• Inverter failure from wear. This is the one item on the list that is not an external event. Capacitors and fans age in hot ambient conditions, and the response is the manufacturer warranty, not insurance. The solar inverter failure guide lists the common failure modes and what to do when your inverter fails covers the first steps.

The first five are insurance territory. The last is warranty territory. Every purchase decision below follows from that split.

Monkey and rodent damage to DC cabling is widely reported by Indian installers, but no published dataset quantifies it, so treat mesh guarding as a maintenance decision. Theft is better documented: police in Panchkula arrested three people over the theft of six solar panels from a golf club, according to The Tribune, which separately reported copper wiring stolen from university rooftops in Amritsar.

Does your home insurance already cover the rooftop array?

Often yes, partially, and with conditions. The standard householder product is Bharat Griha Raksha, which IRDAI introduced in January 2021 and required all general insurers to offer from 1 April 2021. Its Key Features Document names solar panels directly, among covered additional structures alongside garage, compound walls, and water tanks.

Three conditions catch people out.

First, the policy answers only its listed Insured Events, the fire and allied perils set. It is not an all-risk cover. An inverter that dies from an internal fault is not an insured event.

Second, eligibility is residential. If you carry on commercial activity by employing other persons, you cannot buy this policy, according to the IRDAI Key Features Document (2021). A system on a shop, clinic, or small factory falls outside it.

Third, the building sum insured is the cost of rebuilding at prevailing construction cost. The policy includes a waiver of underinsurance, so a shortfall in declared value will not reduce the amount payable, per the same document. That is unusually favourable, but it does not help if the array was never within the insured property. Declare it.

Where both covers are held, General Contents are automatically covered for 20 percent of the Home Building sum insured, capped at ₹10 Lakh. Some insurers treat solar panels as contents rather than building, which changes the limit on your claim.

The four policy types that cover a solar asset

Solar cover in India is assembled, not bought off a shelf. Four forms do almost all the work, and each is defined as much by its exclusions as its perils.

Who sells solar insurance in India

Two different groups sell cover that carries the word “solar”, and mixing them up is the most common mistake in this search.

The first group is specialist products for the solar industry. MNRE keeps a list of them: Circular F. No. 283/72/2019-GRID SOLAR, first issued on 7 January 2020 and re-issued with an updated insurer list on 26 February 2024 after consultation with the Department of Financial Services and IRDAI. The 2024 annexure names six insurers and seven products.

For the ICICI Lombard product, the annexure lists cover periods of 10 to 12 years for product and 25 to 30 years for performance.

Source: MNRE circular dated 26 February 2024, Annexure. Product names, UINs and summaries are as printed there; the circular carries no premium. Wording documents are available from the insurers, for example IFFCO-Tokio’s policy wordings page lists both the Photovoltaic Sales Policy and the Photovoltaic Buyer Policy.

Read the last column before you phone anyone. Five of the seven products insure a module manufacturer’s warranty promise, and the other two pay on a weather index or an energy-production shortfall. They protect the module maker, the lender or the developer. None of the seven is described as cover for physical damage to a 5 kW roof from hail or theft, and none is a product a household would normally buy. That is one reason searches for a solar insurance price land on pages that never print one.

The second group is the cover a rooftop owner can actually buy. That is a home policy that names the panels, or a fire and special perils package, optionally with burglary and breakdown covers. The next two sections show how Tata AIG handles each route, because readers ask about it by name.

Tata AIG solar insurance: what the product pages say

“Tata AIG solar insurance price” is a high-volume query, and the honest answer is that Tata AIG does not publish one. What its own documents do show:

• Solar Module Warranty Insurance. Tata AIG’s prospectus describes Section A as cover for a module manufacturer’s product and performance warranty losses, and Section B as an optional top-up that lets buyers claim if the manufacturer becomes insolvent. The insured is the manufacturer. The policy wording carries UIN IRDAN108CP0010V01202122.
• Weather Insurance Policy. MNRE’s annexure describes it as covering losses resulting from deviation of an observed weather index. It is a commercial, index-linked product.
• Bharat Griha Raksha (home). The policy wording (UIN IRDAN108RP0019V01202021), checked on 14 October 2026, lists solar panels as an example of General Contents, and lists solar panels, wind turbines and similar items as an additional structure if they are not already included in Home Contents. This is the route that fits a rooftop owner.
• Fire and burglary packages. Tata AIG’s fire and burglary page shows a “premium starting at” figure for business property in general. It does not mention solar panels, so it is not a solar price.

So the price of Tata AIG cover for your roof is whatever its home or package quote says for your declared value, location and chosen covers. The asymmetry in the table above is the useful part: the Tata AIG products with “solar” in the name will not pay for a hailstorm on your panels, and the policy that will pay needs the panels declared.

Retail routes for a rooftop owner

Insurers differ, and so do wordings by UIN. Verify each entry against the current wording before you rely on it.

Warranty is not insurance, and the gap is where owners lose money

This is the most common confusion among Indian system owners. A warranty is a promise from the manufacturer about the product. Insurance is a contract of indemnity against an external event. Different triggers, different evidence, different people on the phone.

The gap sits in two places. Warranty will not pay for weather, theft, or grid surge. Insurance will not pay for a component that simply failed. Hold only one and you have a hole on one side.

A third bucket is an annual maintenance contract (AMC), which pays for routine service rather than loss. It sits beside the other two instead of replacing either.

Where a long inverter warranty is in place and in writing, a separate breakdown premium for the inverter may duplicate it. Where the warranty has expired or the battery carries a short term, price the breakdown add-on again. Compare the actual documents, not the brochure. Our warranty series covers warranty vs insurance from the product side. Whatever the headline term, get the written warranty terms for your exact model before you rely on them.

Qbits publishes an expandable warranty, and its public datasheets do not define the base term, remedy, registration deadline or exclusions, so obtain the current written warranty for the exact quoted model. That addresses defects, not cyclones, and no manufacturer warranty in the market does. See the inverter warranty guide, the claim process, and installation versus product warranty.

Setting the sum insured, with a worked example

The sum insured decides what you get paid. The basis of valuation decides whether that number is any use at year five. Reinstatement value pays what an equivalent new system costs today. Indemnity value pays the written-down worth of what was destroyed. Reinstatement costs more in premium and is almost always right, because you cannot buy a five-year-old inverter to replace a five-year-old inverter.

Three costs get forgotten at declaration and can usually be added: removal and disposal including roof access, freight and labour to reinstall, and professional fees. Bharat Griha Raksha pays up to 5 percent of the claim amount for architect, surveyor, and consulting engineer fees, and up to 2 percent for debris removal, according to the IRDAI Key Features Document (2021).

The figures below are illustrative, using an assumed installed cost. They are not a quote, a market price, or a Qbits price. Substitute your own invoice values.

Assumed inputs

• Installed cost, all inclusive: ₹6,00,000 (assumption for the arithmetic only)
• Reinstall labour and freight: 8 percent
• Removal, disposal, and roof access: 3 percent
• Age at loss: 5 years, illustrative depreciation 5 percent per year

Reinstatement basis: ₹6,00,000 + ₹48,000 + ₹18,000 = ₹6,66,000.

Indemnity basis at year 5: 5 years × 5 percent = 25 percent depreciation, so ₹6,00,000 × 0.75 = ₹4,50,000, plus the same ₹66,000 of ancillary costs = ₹5,16,000.

The gap is ₹1,50,000, funded personally on a total loss, and any deductible applies on top. Income Tax Act depreciation is a separate concept from an insurer’s depreciated value. See solar inverter depreciation.

What solar insurance actually costs in India

There is no published tariff. Pricing is filed product by product, and the same roof attracts different numbers by route.

Basic insurance for a solar project in India costs 0.2 to 0.5 percent of project cost, according to Sudhish Ramteke of Anand Rathi Insurance Brokers in a Saur Energy interview (2023). The interview does not state the period, and project premiums are normally annual. Treat this as an industry-observed range for project and commercial policies. The IRDAI-filed New India Solar Energy Insurance Policy (UIN IRDAN190CP0017V01201819) expresses premium as a percentage of total sum insured, adjusted at period end.

Read as an annual rate and applied to the ₹6,66,000 above, that band gives roughly ₹1,332 to ₹3,330. It is sourced for project-scale policies and stretched here for illustration only.

For homes, the only retail figure we could verify is an advertised headline price. On 14 October 2026 Policybazaar’s solar panel add-on page advertised “₹5 Lakh cover at just ₹125/yr*” for a home insurance add-on. That is an aggregator’s starting price with an asterisk, not an insurer’s tariff, and it assumes the panels are declared inside a home policy. Tata AIG’s home contents page, checked the same day, prints no premium and lists total content value, security features, add-ons and claim history as the pricing factors. Treat ₹125 as the floor of what is advertised, not what a given roof will pay, and get dated written quotes. Four things move the number: location risk, breakdown cover, the deductible you accept, and whether business interruption is attached.

C&I specifics: business interruption, construction cover, and lenders

For a commercial and industrial system, the repair bill is rarely the biggest loss. The outage is. An inverter replacement running into months takes generation revenue with it, and a property policy alone does not cover that.

Business interruption is a consequential loss section attached to the property policy, and it must answer the same perils as that policy. If the property policy excludes earthquake, the business interruption section will not pay an earthquake outage either. Set the indemnity period against realistic procurement lead times.

Construction phase cover is a separate policy over a separate period. For a rooftop plant, where equipment dominates contract value, an Erection All Risk form is usually the fit, running through storage, erection, testing, and handover. Contractors All Risk is used where civil works exceed half the contract value, unusual on rooftop.

Workmen’s compensation is the one genuinely mandatory cover, required under the Employees’ Compensation Act, 1923 for any site employing labour.

Lender requirements drive most of the structure on financed assets. Financiers routinely require property and erection cover before disbursement, with the lender named as loss payee. Get the names right at inception, because adding a loss payee after a loss is not possible. See the C&I page.

The myth that catches most owners: insurance will pay for my dead inverter

Buying insurance does not convert equipment failure into a covered loss. That single misunderstanding is why owners are surprised when a claim is declined.

An inverter that fails under normal operation is a warranty matter. Insurance answers when an external event causes the failure. A lightning surge that destroys the unit is an insurance question. A capacitor reaching end of life in year four is not, and even a machinery breakdown policy will usually treat it as wear.

So where the inverter already carries a long written warranty, a separate premium for breakdown cover on that component may not earn its keep. The real value of breakdown cover on a rooftop sits in the ancillary costs: dismantling, re-erection, freight, and duties. No warranty covers those. Read the warranty terms first, then price the gap that remains. For terms by model, the datasheet library is the source document.

How to build a claim file and make a claim go smoothly

Insurers pay on evidence, and what you can assemble after a cyclone is decided by the paperwork filed on the day of commissioning. A thin file is the easiest way to lose value on an otherwise payable claim.

Assemble these at handover.

Then, after a loss, work in this order.

1. Notify the insurer the day you discover the loss, by phone and in writing.
2. File a police FIR for theft or malicious damage before touching the site.
3. Photograph everything before clearing anything.
4. Isolate DC strings and cover exposed wiring. Doing nothing can prejudice the claim.
5. Keep the damaged modules and failed inverter until the surveyor has inspected them.
6. Export the monitoring data for the failure window. Inverter logs often date the event precisely.
7. Submit the claim form within the deadline. Bharat Griha Raksha requires it within 30 days of first noticing the loss, per the IRDAI Key Features Document (2021).
8. Get written repair quotations from the installer and one independent contractor.

Where the failure is a product defect, route it to the manufacturer instead, and use the authorised service partners directory to find a service contact near the site.

Do you actually need solar insurance? A three-question test

Most cases resolve in a few minutes with three questions.

1. Does your home policy already cover the declared array? If the panels and inverter are on the schedule, with a sum insured close to replacement cost, you have the fire, storm and flood layer. Do not buy a duplicate. If you have no home policy, a home policy that declares the solar system usually costs less than a standalone solar policy because it also covers the house.

2. How exposed is your site? Cyclone-prone coast, hail belts, flood plains and roofs with easy outside access carry more external risk than a parapet-secured roof in a sheltered suburb. Higher exposure is the case for dedicated cover.

3. What does the warranty and service stack cover? Equipment failure is the warranty’s job, so check the written term, remedy and exclusions for the exact model. If a warranty has expired or the battery term is short, price a breakdown add-on or set up a replacement fund. See our guide to year-one ownership paperwork and the annual maintenance checklist, which double as claim evidence.

A larger or financed system changes the answer. Add-on limits in a home policy may not keep up with the replacement value of a 10 kW system, and a lender will usually decide the minimum cover for you. Size the instrument to the gap, not to the worry.

The Bottom Line

Solar insurance in India is a stack, not a product. The fire and perils base handles weather. Burglary handles theft. Machinery breakdown handles the electrical failure that the fire policy excludes. Business interruption handles the outage. Warranty handles defects and nothing else. The decision is not whether to insure, but which gaps in your cover matter for your roof, your location, and your warranty terms.

• Read your property policy schedule this week and confirm in writing whether the array, the inverter, and the net meter sit inside the insured property, and on what valuation basis.
• Set the sum insured on reinstatement basis and add removal, access, freight, and professional fees. The worked example shows the gap a depreciated basis leaves.
• Assemble the claim file at commissioning, not after a loss. Contact Qbits for the model-specific warranty terms and equipment documentation an insurance schedule requires.

This guide is general information and is not insurance advice. Policy wordings differ by insurer and by UIN, and rules vary by state and DISCOM. Obtain dated written terms from a licensed insurer or broker before deciding.