We're measuring rooftop solar by the wrong number

Akshara· Host0:00

[upbeat music] In today's episode, we'll break down two important stories. First, we'll talk about India's rooftop solar problem, and then we talk about what happened to the world's electricity in 2025. Welcome back to the Daily Brief by Zerodha, where we cut through the noise to help you understand what's actually happening in the most important stories from business and markets. I'm your host, Akshara. Today is Tuesday, 9th June. Coming to the first story. For years, there was one story we told ourselves about rooftop solar in India, that Indians didn't know enough about it or didn't trust it. They found it too expensive, too complicated, too foreign. Now this pointed to one answer. If only we could get the word out, running campaigns and explaining the savings it could fetch, adoption would follow. But that story, it turned out, was mostly wrong. The truth is more interesting as we learned from two new reports from the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, or CEEW. One on what drives household decisions to install rooftop solar, the other on what happens to the system once it's up there. So here's the short version. India has nearly solved the demand problem. People know about rooftop solar, and a lot of them want it. What it hasn't solved, however, are two gaps sitting on either side of that desire. One, the gap between wanting solar and actually installing it, and two, the gap between installing it and actually generating power from it. Both of these gaps often seem