Uptime checks and repair tracking for village solar streetlights
TL;DR Dusklog tells a state agency or district which village solar streetlights are actually on at night, which contractor owes a repair, and how long it took. It sells verified uptime, not new lights, to the departments paying for lights that too often go dark within months.
States have bought solar streetlights for villages by the lakh, and many stop working. In Bihar, official data as of June 2026 counted 10.59 lakh lights installed, of which 2.16 lakh were non-functional[1]. Villagers there described batteries and panels failing within days. An MNRE-commissioned survey in Rajasthan and Haryana found about 15% of remote-village solar systems dead, blaming target-driven installers and weak supplier maintenance[2]. So a dark pole gets paid for twice - once at purchase and again in lost safety on village lanes after sunset.
Dusklog is an independent check on whether lights work, and it has three parts. A low-cost tag on each pole reports whether the lamp switched on, how long it stayed lit and the battery voltage, sending a daily packet over the mobile network. Where poles already carry a vendor controller, Dusklog reads that data instead of adding hardware. A short night-time drive survey with a phone camera fills gaps in places with no signal.
The output is a ward-by-ward list of dark lights, matched to the contractor responsible, with the clock running against the repair deadline. Districts get a monthly uptime score per contractor that can feed into payment.
I reframed the seed. It pitched AI solar optimisation to cut waste in street lighting, but most urban lights were already moved to LED through EESL's national programme[3]. The bigger waste now is lights that are paid for and dark.
The user is a block or district engineer, but the payer is the state nodal agency or Panchayati Raj department that funds the lights. A per-pole monthly fee is the simplest model. Contractors are a second buyer. If a contractor has a 72-hour repair clause and penalties, as in Bihar[1], then it has every reason to pay for fault alerts before an inspector finds them. I found no public price for third-party uptime monitoring.
Funding has shifted to panchayats. Bihar's scheme drew on ₹1,100 crore from the 15th Finance Commission[4], and states now attach repair deadlines and penalties to maintenance contracts[1]. Cheap cellular modules and app-based status reporting make per-pole checks affordable, and audit findings keep putting dark lights in the news.
There is no published figure for India's streetlight monitoring market. The narrowest signal is Bihar alone - about 10.6 lakh village lights, roughly one in five reported dead[1]. The national LED programme targeted 3.5 crore streetlights[3], but that covers urban roads already handled by EESL, so treat it as adjacent context.
Bihar's renewable agency runs its own central monitoring system and asks panchayat secretaries for weekly app updates[1]. It still reports over two lakh faulty lights, which shows that monitoring alone does not get repairs done. Lighting makers sell controllers that report faults, but each sees only its own poles and works for the vendor. EESL runs urban LED contracts[3]. The gap is a monitor independent of the contractor, which the payer can use to enforce service terms.
| Difficulty | Moderate (45/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹40–80 L |
| Time to launch | 4–6 months |
The tag is simple electronics. The hard part is the government sale - getting a state agency to pay for checks on its own scheme, and getting contractors to accept data that can cut their payments. Field work in villages with poor signal and theft of add-on devices are the operational headaches.
No sector licence is needed to monitor streetlights, but radio and procurement rules apply.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI decide a contractor penalty on its own. Payments can be withheld on this data, so an engineer should check disputed readings by hand.
Want to work out the AI layer for Dusklog? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I think this fits a founder who has sold to state agencies and can run a rural field team. If you want recurring software revenue without village travel then it's a poor fit. First prove that one district will pay for a three-month uptime audit and use the results to withhold a contractor payment.
Plan for roughly ₹40–80 L, covering tags, field staff and the first district pilot.
No sector licence. You need WPC compliance for any radio you add, GeM or tender registration to sell to agencies and DPDP care with survey photos.
Yes, especially where governments have bought off-grid solar lights at scale. Check local radio rules and how public agencies buy services.
The free Dusklog validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the procurement and data checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for district officials and contractors, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Dusklog or something close to it? The make-or-break work is getting a state agency to pay for an honest count of its own dark lights, and I can help you shape that pitch. 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.