No Mains. No Inverter Losses. A House in Fazilka That Ran Entirely on Solar DC.

1. What the 10 July 2016 post actually said

By Kunwer Sachdev (Founder & Managing Director, 1988–2018)

The headline was blunt: 100% Solar Powered House in Punjab. No Connection to Mains! Everything Runs on Solar. Not a hybrid with a polite backup. Not a bill-cut story. A house with no mains.

From that post, not from memory: the home was in a remote part of district Faziika (Fazilka), Punjab — customer address V.P.O. Ghallu, City Abohar, on NH 10. The customer named is Mr. Dinesh Modi and his wife. They did not have electricity through the day. They wanted a tube light, a fan, something better than waiting for a grid that did not come.

The authorised distributor was Mr. Ankit Singla of Hi-Tech Solar Solutions. He put in Su-Kam’s Solar DC System 120 — one panel, 12 V, up to about 120 W of DC load: DC fans, DC tube lights, built-in USB charging. In that house the load named is a DC fan, a DC light, and a dish TV. The post is explicit: the DC system works completely on solar and takes no electricity from the mains. Ankit is quoted that the install was a couple of weeks old and the couple was satisfied. That is the whole ground record.

Why DC, not a small AC inverter

If you invert DC from the panel to AC for a light and a fan, you throw away energy in the conversion. For a 120 W rural kit that loss is the difference between a working evening and a dead battery. Solar DC keeps the load on DC — light, fan, USB, and in this case a dish TV on the DC side — so almost nothing is wasted turning watts into heat in an inverter. That is the same Direct-DC idea we scaled under UPNEDA for tens of thousands of UP homes — Episode 1. Kannauj was the other answer: a central mini-grid for two villages. Episode 9. Ghallu is one panel and one box on one house. Same sun. Different architecture.

Saur Energy later summarised the product line the same way: Su-Kam’s solar DC home lighting with fan, light and TV on DC so no energy is wasted in DC-to-AC conversion — and my line that the dream was solar in every house in India. The Ghallu install is one named proof of that kit in the field.

2. Ground record from the 10 July 2016 post

3. Hub

• Episode 1 — Direct-DC / 40,000 UP homes
• Episode 9 — Kannauj 250 kW mini-grid (different architecture)
• HLS1210 — early solar home lighting SKU
• Solar DC System — TEDA / UPNEDA / BLDC story
• Recovered Punjab archive page
• Facebook Archive — Solar Home Lighting

Historical Documentation Notice:
This article documents a historical installation from the tenure of Kunwer Sachdev as Founder & Managing Director of Su-Kam Power Systems Ltd. (1988–2018). He exited in 2019 under the IBC process and holds no association with Su-Kam or its subsequent management. Names, address, kit and loads are taken from the recovered 10 July 2016 company blog. District spelling “Faziika” is as printed; modern maps use Fazilka.