Maharashtra's Battery Mandate Puts an Unchecked Number in Every Solar Loan

Since 1 April 2026, new solar projects above 100 kW in Maharashtra need a battery to get connected. Most credit teams have no way to check what that battery will actually earn.

Solar is easy to underwrite: a yield report, cost per kW and the borrower's banking, and two consultants looking at the same plant land in the same place. The battery is different. Its savings are decided by the site, not the equipment: by the ToD tariff the grid charges hour by hour, by when the battery discharges against peak load, and by the load shape underneath, which decides what either lever earns. Every one of those is now inside a C&I solar loan file.

The trigger: above 100 kW, storage is no longer optional

Maharashtra's RE & Storage Policy 2025–36, Government Resolution dated 18 March 2026, requires new solar and wind above 100 kW seeking connectivity from 1 April 2026 to add storage of 50% of RE capacity for at least two hours. An 85 kW rooftop needs no storage; a 1 MW rooftop now carries 500 kW × 2 hours, or 1,000 kWh, in the loan. Other states are expected to follow. The ticket size grows, and so does the part of it nobody has independently checked.

Why the battery number is hard to verify

• Load shape. Two plants with identical monthly units can earn very different savings depending on how much of their load sits inside the peak ToD window. A single-shift plant with almost no peak load earns thin savings; a round-the-clock plant with a big peak load lets the battery earn. A monthly bill doesn't show that.
• Which lever earns. ToD shifting earns only on units inside the peak window and needs the ToD zone split from the bills. Demand-charge reduction earns only if the battery actually shaves the monthly peak, and needs 15-minute interval data. A single blended savings figure tells you neither, yet the EMI-coverage story rests on which one it is.
• Year ten. Most proposals hold year-one savings flat for a decade and cost no augmentation. A 4.2-year payback that sits comfortably inside a 5-year tenor on paper can fall outside it once fade and augmentation enter the cashflow. A two-hour battery is not a two-hour battery in year seven.

The gap in the credit process

The file moves from borrower (shares bills) to EPC (builds the proposal) to relationship manager (collects the file) to credit and underwriting (checks the numbers) to sanction (amount and tenor). What gets checked today is the solar yield report (P50/P90), cost per kW against the market, and the borrower's balance sheet and banking. What does not get checked is where the battery savings come from, what is left of them in year 10, and whether the battery is sized for the load.

Not through carelessness. There is simply no independent way to check it, so the EPC's own spreadsheet becomes the basis for the repayment story.

Closing the gap with one page

That is the gap Ingro Sims was built to close. It takes the two documents already in the file, the EPC proposal and 6–12 months of electricity bills, and returns one page for the underwriter:

• Expected and downside savings range, to test EMI coverage against the downside
• Split by source, showing which lever actually carries the claim
• Payback against the tenor
• Missing-data flags, so the lender sends one precise query to the EPC, not five

Nothing extra is asked of the borrower, the EPC runs the study, and triage takes minutes. Sims is an assessment aid; it approves and rejects nothing, and the credit authority still takes the decision. Ingro also offers lenders a free back-test: send 10 solar projects disbursed over a year ago, and Ingro compares what the EPC projected, what Sims projects, and what the plant actually delivered. That difference is the gap being underwritten on every storage file today.