Your panels are up. Your net meter isn't — and that's a separate approval altogether.

Installation day feels like the finish line. For BESCOM, it's the halfway point.

Most homeowners assume that once the panels are mounted, wired, and switched on, they're done — the system is generating, so surely the meter and bill will sort themselves out. They won't. Your rooftop system stays outside net metering, and your bill stays calculated the old way, until BESCOM's inspection team signs off and swaps your existing meter for a bidirectional net meter. That's a distinct approval with its own documents and its own site visit — and it's the stage where a well-installed system still sits idle for weeks over paperwork that was never prepared properly the first time.

What BESCOM actually wants before it schedules the inspection.

Your installer submits a commissioning request on your behalf, but it's worth knowing what's actually in that file, because gaps in it are the single biggest cause of delay:

• Single line diagram (SLD) of the installation — how the panels, inverter, isolator, and meter connect — signed by the installer, matching what's physically on your roof and wall.
• Structural stability declaration confirming your roof can bear the mounting structure's load, especially relevant for older RCC roofs or tiled roofs with added weight.
• Inverter test and compliance report, confirming the inverter meets grid-interactivity and anti-islanding requirements — this is what lets the inverter automatically disconnect during a grid outage rather than backfeeding the line.
• Installer's completion report with photographs of the panels, inverter, earthing, and isolator switch as actually installed.
• Indemnity bond or undertaking from you as the consumer, accepting responsibility for the installation meeting safety norms.
• Consumer and connection proof — your BESCOM consumer number and a recent bill copy, matched against the sanctioned load your system was approved against.

None of this is unusual — it's standard for any grid-interactive generation, however small. The problem is that homeowners rarely see this list before signing with an installer, so there's no way to check it's being assembled correctly until BESCOM flags something missing.

What the site engineer actually checks when they show up.

The inspection is usually brief but specific. The engineer verifies the earthing pit is installed and accessible, that the AC isolator switch sits in a labelled, reachable location — not buried behind the inverter or inside a locked room — that DC and AC cabling is routed per standard practice, and that installed capacity matches what was declared, down to the inverter model and panel count. Even a small mismatch, like an inverter swapped mid-installation without updating the paperwork, is enough to stall approval until the documents are corrected.

The rejection reasons that cost weeks, not the paperwork itself.

• SLD or completion report not matching site reality — the most common issue, usually because paperwork was filed before the final installation configuration was locked in.
• Isolator switch inaccessible or unlabelled — a safety requirement, not a formality, and an easy one for installers to deprioritise on a rushed job.
• Declared capacity mismatch against your sanctioned load application — if your load enhancement or system size was revised after the initial BESCOM application, the commissioning file needs to reflect that, not just the installation itself.
• Incomplete or unsigned indemnity bond — a document homeowners are meant to sign personally, which sometimes gets missed when everything else is handled by the installer.

A homeowner we worked with in Jayanagar had a technically sound installation sit unconnected for nearly four weeks because the completion report listed a different inverter model than what was actually mounted — a last-minute stock swap by the original installer that never made it into the paperwork. Once we corrected the SLD and resubmitted, BESCOM's re-inspection and commissioning took under ten days. The system itself never needed to change; only the file describing it did.

How to avoid the back-and-forth

Ask your installer to walk you through the completion report and SLD before they request an inspection date, not after — confirm the inverter model, panel count, and capacity figures match what's physically installed. Photograph your earthing pit and isolator switch location yourself, so you know they're accessible before BESCOM's engineer checks. And if your system size changed at any point after your original application — a bigger inverter, an added string of panels — ask explicitly whether that revision was filed with BESCOM, because commissioning paperwork gets checked against the original sanction, not against what ended up on your roof.