Does your solar switch off during a BESCOM power cut?

Yes, it does. By design.

This is the single most common misunderstanding we run into during site surveys in Bengaluru. Homeowners assume that once they've installed rooftop solar, a BESCOM outage won't matter — the panels are up there in the sun, so surely the lights stay on. They don't. A standard grid-tied solar system, which is what almost every net-metered installation in Bengaluru is, shuts itself off within seconds of a grid outage. This isn't a fault. It's a safety feature called anti-islanding, and it's mandatory under the IEC 62116 standard that BESCOM requires every net-metering inverter to comply with.

Here's why it exists: if your inverter kept exporting power onto the line during an outage, that line — which BESCOM linemen assume is dead — would stay live. Anti-islanding protection detects the grid going down and disconnects your system automatically, whether or not the sun is out.

Why this catches people off guard

Most quotes and sales conversations focus entirely on bill savings — rightly so, since that's where the ROI comes from. But "your BESCOM bill drops to near zero" and "you'll have power when BESCOM doesn't" are two completely different claims, and only the first one is true for a standard grid-tied system. If your area gets scheduled maintenance shutdowns or the occasional monsoon-season outage, a plain solar-plus-net-metering setup gives you nothing during that window — same as before you went solar.

Situation	Grid-tied solar (no battery)
Sunny day, BESCOM supply normal	Panels power your home, excess exports to grid
Sunny day, BESCOM outage	Inverter shuts off within seconds — zero output, even in full sun
Night, BESCOM outage	No power, same as without solar
Sunny day, BESCOM outage, hybrid inverter + battery	Panels keep charging the battery; battery runs essential loads

Does this change your ROI math?

Not really — and that's worth being clear about. Your payback period is calculated from daytime self-consumption and net-metering exports, not from outage coverage. A well-sized 3 kW system in Bengaluru still pays back in roughly 3.5–4.5 years on bill savings alone, outages or not. What it does change is what you should expect from the system, and whether a plain grid-tied setup is enough for your household, or whether backup for a few essential loads is worth the extra spend.

Three ways Bengaluru homeowners handle this

• Do nothing extra. Bengaluru's core areas see far fewer unscheduled outages than they did five years ago, and BESCOM's own reliability numbers have improved as the utility has turned profitable. For most homes, a short outage a few times a month isn't worth solving for.
• Add a small hybrid inverter and battery for essentials only. This isn't the same as running your whole house off-grid — it's sized for the fridge, a few lights, Wi-Fi, and fans for a few hours. It's a meaningfully smaller and cheaper add-on than full home backup, and it plugs into your existing solar array.
• Keep a separate inverter/UPS for backup, unconnected to solar. Some households already have a traditional inverter-battery setup for outages and simply leave it as is, running solar purely for bill reduction. There's no requirement to combine the two.

A real example from Whitefield

A homeowner in Whitefield installed a 4 kW system in March 2026 and called us three weeks later, confused, during a two-hour afternoon outage — full sun outside, inverter showing zero generation. Nothing was wrong with the system; it was doing exactly what it's supposed to do. After we explained the anti-islanding requirement, they added a small 3 kWh battery with a hybrid inverter for about ₹1.1 lakh extra, sized to run their fridge, router, and living room lights during outages. Their core solar payback period didn't move — it's still tracking to about 4 years on BESCOM bill savings. The battery was a separate decision, made with full information, not a surprise fix.