Tales from the Northeast: Promise and Challenges in Assam’s Solar Sector

It’s 10:00 AM, and my eyes are heavy. As my back slowly sinks into the car seat, I prop myself up by resting my elbow on the armrest. If it were any other day, I’d be craving a morning coffee. But today I’m so engrossed with the scenes flying by me that I don’t seem to care. All around me, lush green hills roll through the landscape. Thick, leafy coconut trees and paddy fields blanket the countryside for miles. Today, I’m on my way to Baksa, a district within the Bodoland Territorial Region (BTR) of Assam

Assam with the Bodoland Territorial Region highlighted. Baksa is one of its five districts.

The five districts of Bodoland, mapped using GIS. Photo courtesy of Mini Bargayary.

About twenty kilometers from the Bhutan border, the car turns onto a dirt path and comes to a stop. I climb out. A group of smiling women is already standing there. Before I gain my bearings, they’re already pulling me into a small mud hut. There are no lights. It’s cold, at least much colder than outside. And then I get a pungent whiff of something damp and rotting. I stand there half blind, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they do, I see the floor is covered in sticks. Hundreds of them, maybe more. Then one moves. Then another. That’s when I realize that, sprawled out in front of me, are thousands of squirming, slimy worms munching away on a pile of decomposing leaves.

One of the ladies pulls me aside and tells me that these worms have been the backbone of Assam’s ancient silk-making tradition for hundreds, if not thousands of years. These worms, known as Eri silkworms, are unique to the region’s silk-making process. They’re fed castor leaves, and then, once mature, they spin themselves into silk cocoon pods.

After the briefing, I’m then taken through a low doorway into the adjacent hut. The room is small and much quieter. The worms are now sleeping in their freshly spun cocoon pods. In the center of the room are some of the harvested cocoons in a sack. They look like peanuts, but feel coarser and grainier to the touch, like cotton balls.

One of the women grabs the sack and gestures for me to follow her. We cut across the courtyard into a small workshop that’s also clearly someone’s bedroom. There, in the corner, is a bed and a desk with some books. In the middle of the room is a little green spinning machine sitting on a wooden table. The lady then drops the basket and flips a switch. The spool starts turning. Then she picks up a cocoon and, in a single, gentle pulling motion, draws it out into a thin white thread. She beams with satisfaction as I peer over her shoulder, watching her gentle, supple hands go to work.

Engrossed with the scene, I forget to hear that one of the women is talking to me. She mentions, almost in passing, that the entire operation runs on solar power. I’m called back outside into the courtyard and told to look upward. There, a small black solar panel lies on the rusted tin roof of the workshop. Without it, the spinning machine would cease to run.

I am told that, over here, machines need solar to run because the grid doesn’t provide reliable electricity. By using solar, these women can run machines that power their cottage industry activities. The value created through this kind of solarized agro-processing is enormous. For example, the raw cocoons harvested by the women are worth around 900 rupees per kilo. But the processed yarn sells for around 4,000 rupees, giving the women the opportunity to quadruple their incomes.

While the visit to the silk farm was one of the most memorable, I saw several other instances of solar being used to power cottage industry. Later in my journey, I met an older man running a small turmeric processing unit and a rice husking unit out of his home. Both machines were entirely solar powered by a 3-kilowatt system. I asked him why he bought the solar panels and the accompanying machines. He smiled and bent his head to take a hard look at the ground before looking back up at me.

He said he was originally a trucker, but after experiencing heart complications, he was forced to quit his job and stay at home. He wanted to earn while homebound, so he invested the money he saved as a trucker into the machines. Within two years of operating them, he broke even, and after five years of being in operation, he has been so profitable that he now wants to expand his agro-processing operations and purchase higher-capacity machines.

The success this man had with solar technology isn’t a cherry-picked case. Broader statistical trends also back it up. From FY 2019-2020 to 2024-2025, capital investment in Assam’s solar industry surged, as the state saw its installed solar capacity grow from 52 MW to 474 MW, making it the second fastest-growing state for solar behind only Goa.¹ It is evident that more and more people are adopting solar, precisely because it is working. ​

At the same time, rapid solar growth has created new fractures in the industry by overstretching its capacity. Today, the sector suffers from a shortage of trained technicians needed to operate and maintain the expanding number of solar systems. The maintenance issue is nothing new in India. In 2023, Smart Power India found that of the more than 3,300 government-financed mini-grids installed, fewer than five percent were operational.² This maintenance failure was especially apparent during one of my later field visits.

It happened at a convenience store in the Assamese countryside, densely packed with all kinds of chips, Maggi, and other canned goods. Toward the back was a large white fridge, with dust caked on top. When I opened the fridge, a wave of stale, musty air hit me. I asked why the fridge wasn’t running, and the owner explained that ever since his solar panel went out, the fridge shut off. The solar fridge ran for less than two years. When I asked why he didn’t get the panel fixed, he replied that he had called the vendor who installed the panel multiple times, but they simply wouldn’t come. It was too far out of the way.

This is a common response from solar vendors. Because most solar vendors are based near urban centers like Guwahati, traveling hundreds of kilometers to remote, rural areas is costly and time-consuming. So many simply don’t. This produces a coverage gap that hits hardest in the communities that need solar the most: rural areas with weak grid infrastructure.

Leaning on the now defunct fridge, I looked at the ground to see two large solar batteries, each worth 14,000 rupees, and a solar inverter worth around 20,000 rupees. The shopkeeper bought these items along with the solar panel to run the fridge, but now they were lying idle, collecting dust, depreciating in value. When I went outside to look at the roof, I saw a thick layer of dirt covering the black solar panel. It could have needed just a minor cleaning, but until a vendor came out to inspect it, no one would know. Until then, the fridge would go unused, the inverters and batteries would rot, and the shopkeeper would miss out on earning thousands of rupees by being unable to sell milk, ice cream, and other refrigerable products. ​

One way rural areas can overcome the maintenance issue is by creating a local ecosystem of solar technicians, as opposed to relying on urban technicians, who can operate and maintain these systems. By creating this local ecosystem, solar panels can have longer lifespans, and businesses will have more confidence adopting solar technology, knowing that a skilled network of technicians is nearby to troubleshoot issues. More importantly, businesses and cottage industries will benefit from a reliable electricity supply, and local electricians will have the opportunity to increase their incomes by offering solar maintenance services.

Already, some efforts at creating this ecosystem are underway. SELCO Foundation, an NGO focused on bringing sustainable energy to underserved communities, has been building exactly this kind of local solar ecosystem across the Northeast. They’ve already launched several small, short-term pilot training programs, teaching rural residents how to maintain and service their own solar panels. It’s a good start, but there is clear room to scale both by expanding these programs across the region and by extending their duration.

There’s also an opportunity to draw greater interest from regional energy companies to hire these trained rural technicians and work with them as local partners. Right now, solar penetration remains limited in many rural areas because companies do not have the local capacity to set up shop there and maintain their systems. By facilitating stronger linkages between village electricians and solar firms, the industry can expand its customer base and profit, while local electricians gain a stable income.

The urgency of building out this ecosystem becomes even clearer when we zoom out and look at India’s growing energy demand. As the world’s fourth-largest and fastest-growing major economy, India’s demand for energy is only accelerating. Assam has been a part of the country’s economic success story, having grown its own GDP by 45% over the past five financial years, making it India’s fastest-growing state economy, according to the State Bank of India.³ As its economy continues to grow, so too will its appetite for energy. Looking into the future, Assam’s industries will increasingly look for more power sources to fuel their expansion. Sectors like agriculture, which employs around 69% of the state’s workforce, would benefit greatly from additional solar supplies, since it would enable businesses to run higher-capacity machines for activities like agroprocessing and harvesting.⁴ By having a larger number of solar technicians, Assam can solve its maintenance challenge and create one of the nation’s most robust solar ecosystems一one where solar panels are not only installed, but kept running for years to come.

Janak Sekaran is a fellow at the American India Foundation, where he focuses on expanding energy access to vulnerable communities and promoting green livelihood initiatives. He would like to thank William Lahary of SELCO Foundation for arranging the site visits in Assam and the American India Foundation for providing the grant funding for this visit.

References

¹ “Assam State Profile.” 2026. India Climate & Energy Dashboard. NITI Aayog. 2026. https://iced.niti.gov.in/state-report/assam.

² Mehrotra, Karishma. 2023. “India Joins Rush to Renewables, but Its Rural Solar Systems Fall off Grid.” Washington Post. July 31, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/31/india-solar-energy/.

³  “Gross State Domestic Product.” 2025. Reserve Bank of India. 2025. https://rbi.org.in/Scripts/AnnualPublications.aspx?head=Handbook%20of%20Statistics%20on%20Indian%20States.

⁴ Food Processing Towards Sustainable Growth Opportunities: State Profile Assam. Ministry of Food Processing Industries, 2025, www.mofpi.gov.in/sites/default/files/KnowledgeCentre/State%20Profile/Assam.pdf.