Left in the dark: Western UP’s migrant workers lose light, faith with unmaintained solar panels

Aligarh/Bulandshahr: In a dusty brick kiln colony on the outskirts of Aligarh, 32-year-old migrant worker Kamal Singh stands beside a lifeless solar panel mounted on his hut.

“Yeh toh roshni ka sahara tha. Par ab pehle jaise nahi chalta. (This was our source of light. But now it doesn’t work like before,” he said.

Once a symbol of self-reliance that lit up his hut and powered a fan through scorching summers, the panel is now coated in grime, barely functioning -- a casualty of lack of maintenance, guidance and rising air pollution.

As India expands its renewable energy footprint, stories like Kamal have revealed a troubling gap between

solar adoption and solar maintenance.

Many migrant workers across the dusty interiors of western Uttar Pradesh -- Hathras, Bulandshahr, Aligarh -- embraced solar as a lifeline to meet their energy needs but are now finding themselves disillusioned.

Some even pooled money to install small solar panels on their huts using their savings from months of labour under the sun and for a while, it even worked: two bulbs lit up their rooms, a fan offered respite from the heat, and mobile phones stayed charged.

But today, the lights flicker weakly and the fan barely moves.

“We don’t know what went wrong. When we took it to the shop, they said dust had accumulated on it. Then we cleaned it properly with a cloth, but it’s still not working like before,” said Kamal’s wife, Rashmi.

Neeraj Jain, director at Solar Square, an Indian company focused on residential solar energy solutions, pointed out that cleaning must be done gently and correctly.

“Leaning or scrubbing too hard can cause micro-cracks or damage the anti-reflective coating, which significantly reduces the panel’s lifespan,” he cautioned.

But this knowledge hasn’t reached the brick kiln workers of western Uttar Pradesh, who often rely on second-hand information or trial-and-error methods.

With little formal training and no local technicians to guide them, families clean panels with the same cloth and phenyl solution they use to mop floors or dust it the way they do dusting at home.

Some lean directly on the glass surface while scrubbing, unaware they may be damaging the very panels they depend on for electricity.

In these informal settlements, where electricity theft, outages, and diesel costs once made solar seem like a breakthrough, the lack of aftercare and support has quickly turned innovation into frustration.

“I saved Rs 3,000 on electricity last year. But now, the panel stopped working properly. No one ever told us how to take care of it,” said Kishore Kumar, a migrant construction worker in Nanau village.

“We bought it thinking it would help during nights as we were either dependent on oil lamps or pilfering electricity, but it became more headache than help,” said Sangeeta, who migrated from Bihar’s Gaya to work in a brick kiln in Nanau village of Uttar Pradesh’s Aligarh district.