Solar and batteries at rural phone towers, spare daytime power sold next door
TL;DR Anchorwatt puts solar panels and batteries at rural phone towers where the grid is patchy, owns the kit, and bills the tower company per unit instead of diesel. Spare daytime power goes to two or three businesses beside the tower, such as a flour mill or milk chiller. The tower is the anchor customer that makes the small grid pay.
India has about 0.7 million telecom towers, up from 0.4 million in 2014[1], and a lot of rural sites still lean on diesel. A NITI Aayog estimate puts rural tower grid supply at about 13.5 hours a day against 20 in metros. TRAI worked out that a 3–4 kW tower running a generator eight hours a day burns 8,760 litres a year[1], and generator power costs ₹18–28 per kWh[1].
Village businesses nearby face the same gaps. A mill or chiller that runs in the day often has its own diesel set, so a village can end up with two generators a few metres apart. Not exactly efficient, is it?
What it does, in regulatory terms: generation and local distribution in a rural area, relying on the Electricity Act's licence exemption for areas a state has notified. Each state's notification and the Central Electricity Authority's safety rules apply[2]. Confirm the site is in a notified area before you sign anyone.
At each chosen tower Anchorwatt installs a solar array sized above the tower's own needs, a battery bank and smart meters. The tower company pays a per-unit rate below its diesel cost on a multi-year contract, and Anchorwatt carries the capital and upkeep. Spare daylight power runs on a short line to a few metered business users within a few hundred metres.
The seed pitched towers as the base for village microgrids that also bring connectivity. We reframed it, because most villages have a grid line now and selling household power means fighting subsidised discom tariffs. The gap that pays is diesel at the tower and daytime power for small businesses, so that's where Anchorwatt starts.
The tower company pays first, per kWh, because it already pays for diesel, theft losses and generator servicing at poor-grid sites. The largest tower company alone ran 2,67,611 towers at June 2026[3]. The second payer is the business next door - a flour mill, rice huller, milk chiller or cold room owner who pays a metered daytime tariff instead of running a diesel set. Nobody publishes a tariff for tower energy-as-a-service, so you'll learn it at the negotiating table.
Battery-backed hybrids now beat diesel on paper at rural base stations, and a 2026 study modelled about 28% lower energy cost than a fuel-only site[4]. Tower companies have net-zero targets and plan to add solar, though they publish no site counts yet[5]. Off-grid solar in India reached 6.63 GW cumulative by September 2026[6], so installers and parts are much easier to find.
There's no public figure for India's tower energy-as-a-service market. The bottom-up picture is firmer - about 0.7 million towers, rural grid supply near 13.5 hours a day and generator power at ₹18–28 per kWh[1]. Even a few thousand poor-grid sites, each saving several thousand litres of diesel a year, would hold up a business. Treat any number for the community side as unproven until a pilot shows what nearby users pay.
Tower companies run their own green programmes, and the largest lists green technology among its services[3]. One mini-grid company builds solar and storage mini-grids for communities and businesses in Asia and Africa, with a base in Patna[7]. We found no Indian operator publicly running tower-anchored grids that also sell to the neighbours. The gap is one owner-operator who serves both, so every site earns from two customers.
| Difficulty | Hard (60/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹3.5–6 Cr |
| Time to launch | 12–18 months |
The engineering is well known. The hard parts are capital and contracts. You fund the hardware up front and earn it back over years, so you need a tower company to sign long tariffs and somebody willing to lend against them. Site work, theft protection and battery upkeep across scattered villages keep the ops team busy all year.
This one is regulated. Generating and distributing power needs a licence unless the area qualifies for an exemption.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't trust a model on legal questions like which district counts as a notified rural area. That needs the state's notification in writing.
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I like this for a founder with solar project finance and field operations experience, ideally with a contact inside a tower company. If you're hoping for software margins then it's a poor fit. Prove one thing first - that a tower company will sign a per-unit contract for ten pilot sites at a rate that pays back the kit in under six years.
Plan for roughly ₹3.5–6 Cr, because you fund the hardware up front and earn it back over years. Ten pilot sites is a sensible start.
Possibly not, if the area is notified as rural under Section 14 of the Electricity Act. CEA safety rules still apply, and you need the notification in writing.
Yes, in markets where towers still run on diesel. Electricity licensing differs a lot, so check with the local regulator.
The free Anchorwatt validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the licence and state-notification checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for tower firms and village businesses, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Anchorwatt or something close to it? The make-or-break work is a bankable per-unit contract with a tower company, and getting that contract right is something I can help you with. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.