In Cuttack and Sambalpur, dozens of women from local self help groups have trained as Solar Didis, going door to door to explain rooftop solar in a language their neighbours actually trust.
Most people do not learn about solar from a website or an advertisement. They learn about it from someone they already trust, a neighbour, a relative, someone from their own community who has actually seen it work. Odisha's Solar Didi programme is built entirely around that simple truth, and it is quietly becoming one of the most effective parts of the state's rooftop solar push.
Who the Solar Didis Are
In June 2026, 29 women from Self Help Groups under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana, identified through Cuttack Municipal Corporation, completed a specialised training programme at the Tata Power Skill Development Institute in Cuttack. They were not solar engineers or technical professionals before this. They were women already active in their local SHGs, chosen and trained to become the first link between a household and the idea of going solar.
The Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana National Urban Livelihoods Mission, or DAY-NULM, already works through thousands of Self Help Groups across Indian cities to build sustainable livelihoods for urban women, mostly through savings groups, small enterprise support, and skill training. Solar Didi is essentially a new skill layered onto that existing network, rather than something built from scratch. That matters, because it means the women chosen for this role already had standing in their communities before they ever mentioned solar to anyone.
The training itself covered the basics of rooftop solar installation, operation and maintenance, along with something equally important, how to explain all of this clearly to a family who has never considered solar before. The Solar Didi Initiative is a joint programme run by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, delivered locally through TPCODL in Central Odisha.
What They Actually Do
Once trained, Solar Didis do not install panels themselves. Their role is outreach, going door to door across their own wards, answering questions, clearing up confusion about subsidies, and helping families understand the Utility Led Aggregation model that many DISCOMs now use to make PM Surya Ghar applications simpler. For a lot of families, this is the first time someone has explained solar to them in their own language, in their own neighbourhood, without any sales pressure behind it.
This is a genuinely different kind of outreach than what most solar companies rely on. A typical sales visit assumes the homeowner already has some interest and just needs the details filled in. A Solar Didi visit often starts from zero, a family that has never seriously thought about solar, does not know what PM Surya Ghar even is, and may be wary of anyone showing up unannounced to talk about their electricity bill. Having that first conversation happen with someone from the same SHG network, someone whose face is already familiar in the ward, removes a layer of suspicion that a stranger simply cannot get past as quickly.
Not Just Cuttack
A month later, in July 2026, TPWODL launched its own batch in Sambalpur, training 24 women from Self Help Groups identified by Sambalpur Municipal Corporation. After a nine day training programme at TPSDI Gosala, this batch began door to door awareness campaigns across all 41 wards of Sambalpur city. The model is clearly built to spread, city by city, following the same pattern that worked in Cuttack, recruit locally, train intensively over roughly a week to ten days, then deploy the same women into the neighbourhoods they already know.
It is worth noting how quickly this expanded. Cuttack's first batch finished training in mid-June. Sambalpur's batch was already underway by mid-July. If this pace continues, it is reasonable to expect other TPCODL and TPWODL coverage areas, and eventually TPNODL and TPSODL territory as well, to see their own Solar Didi batches within the next year or two.
Why This Matters Beyond the Numbers
It would be easy to read this as a small training programme, a few dozen women, a couple of cities. But the value here is not really about scale yet. It is about trust. Rooftop solar can feel complicated and unfamiliar to a family that has never dealt with subsidies, net metering, or DISCOM paperwork before. A stranger in a sales uniform explaining all of this rarely lands the same way as a woman from your own community, someone you already know, walking you through it patiently and honestly.
We see a version of this same trust gap in our own work at Green Filament. Families often understand, in the abstract, that solar could lower their electricity bill. What actually holds them back is not the concept, it is the practical questions nobody has clearly answered for them. How much paperwork is involved. What happens if the subsidy application gets delayed. Whether the installer will actually show up when promised. A programme built specifically to answer those questions, delivered by someone with no sales incentive attached, closes that gap faster than any advertisement could.
There is also a quieter benefit here that is easy to miss. This programme gives women in these SHGs a genuine skill and a role in their community's clean energy transition, not as a side project, but as the actual frontline of how solar reaches ordinary households. For a woman who has spent years building savings and livelihood skills through her SHG, becoming a recognised local expert on something as significant as her neighbourhood's clean energy transition is a meaningful step, both for her income potential and her standing in the community.
The Bigger Push Behind It
The Solar Didi programme is one part of a larger shift happening in Odisha right now. The state climbed from 13th to 7th nationally in rooftop solar installations, with the four Odisha DISCOMs together facilitating close to 1.74 lakh installations. TPCODL alone has facilitated 56,842 installations, followed by TPWODL with 48,905, TPNODL with 44,785, and TPSODL with 23,881. Baleshwar, Ganjam, Khordha and Cuttack have each crossed 10,000 installations on their own, together accounting for roughly 143 MWp of the state's 410 MWp total rooftop solar capacity.
Alongside Solar Didi, TPCODL also runs a mobile outreach vehicle called Solar Rath and holds Surya Ghar Gram Sabhas at the panchayat level, all aimed at the same goal, making solar feel less like a technical decision and more like something your own community is already doing. Taken together, these efforts describe a deliberate strategy, rather than one where subsidies alone are expected to drive adoption, Odisha's DISCOMs are actively investing in the human side of the transition, the part where someone has to walk a family through their first conversation about going solar.
What This Means If You Are Considering Solar
If a Solar Didi ever knocks on your door in Cuttack or Sambalpur, it is worth actually hearing her out. She has been trained specifically to answer the questions families usually have, subsidy amounts, how rooftop solar actually works, and what the process looks like from application to installation. And if you are outside these two cities and want that same clarity, our team at Green Filament walks every family through the same information, honestly and without pressure, whether you reach out to us in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, or anywhere else we serve across Odisha.
Programmes like Solar Didi are a reminder that the biggest barrier to solar adoption in India was rarely the technology itself. It was trust, and clear information delivered by someone people actually believe. Odisha is slowly closing that gap, one household conversation at a time, and it is worth watching how far this particular model spreads over the next few years.
