Solar pump service in FSM: PM-KUSUM five-year maintenance, quarterly inspections and fault restoration for vendors and EPCs

The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan (PM-KUSUM) supports decentralised solar plants, standalone solar pumps and the solarisation of grid-connected pumps. Component-B covers standalone off-grid solar pumps. According to PIB, decentralised solar capacity reached 16.3 GW in the previous year, of which 7.6 GW came under PM-KUSUM. PIB reported that on 21 October 2026, at the AgriVoltaics World Conference 2026 in New Delhi, Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy Pralhad Joshi announced that one of the world's most ambitious agrivoltaic programmes would be launched under the next phase of PM-KUSUM. More installs mean more five-year service obligations, spread across villages.

What SECI's tender asks of the vendor after commissioning:

• Complaints and breakdown calls. These come from the helpline or the toll-free number on the pump. In SECI's tender, the system must be repaired, restored or replaced within 3 days of the complaint.
• Scheduled CMC inspections. Every pump is inspected at least once a quarter, and a quarterly inspection report is submitted in the prescribed format.

Over both sits the fleet target of at least 95% of installed pumps working at any time. It is measured across the installed base, so a few slow repairs eat the margin.

Vendors often call this CMC an AMC. In SECI's tender, the five-year O&M cost is built into the system cost, so covered work is already paid for. Anything outside the CMC is a commercial matter between you and your customer; our AMC contract management guide covers covered and chargeable logic.

A complaint has a short path to close in 3 days:

1. Complaint logged from the helpline, the toll-free number on the controller or an SIA referral, with the pump number.
2. Assigned to the district service centre that covers the village.
3. Technician dispatched with the pump's history and spares from the district stock.
4. Pump repaired, restored or replaced.
5. Job closed with photos, notes and the farmer's confirmation, and the outcome added to the pump's record.

The district service centre, local technician and district spares in SECI's tender exist for this clock. The tender does not say whether the 3 days are calendar or working days, so plan to the stricter reading. Our guide to technician scheduling and dispatch covers queue and capacity planning.

Each pump must be visited at least once a quarter for five years. A workable plan:

• Generate the visit for every pump each quarter, and group visits by village cluster.
• Use one standard checklist: modules, structure, controller, motor-pump set, RMS status and insurance validity.
• Capture photos and readings at each visit.
• Produce the report per pump in the format your SIA prescribes.

In SECI's tender, the vendor provides an RMS with every pump and must keep it working and pushing accurate data for five years. The RMS is integrated with the controller and shows live status on the SIA's state portal and MNRE's central portal. A pump whose RMS has stopped reporting is a service job in its own right.

Insurance is a dated task too: the tender requires an insurance certificate to the beneficiary, renewed every year.

Everything above depends on one installed-base record for each pump. That record should hold:

• Farmer or beneficiary and site details.
• The pump number marked on the controller and captured in the SIA's application at installation.
• Pump capacity, controller and module details.
• Commissioning date, which starts the five-year CMC.
• O&M manual handover and insurance dates.
• Every complaint, repair and quarterly inspection, with photos and notes.

The record is your evidence. In SECI's tender, MNRE, the SIA or a designated agency may inspect systems during operation, and the performance guarantee must be extended every year for the first five years.

Two clauses set the consequences.

• Clause 33, liquidated damages. For delay in execution or "delay in maintenance beyond the stipulated time schedule", the SIA may recover 0.5% of the value of the delayed or unexecuted work per week or part of a week, up to 3% of the total contract value. The SIA may also have the work done elsewhere at the vendor's risk and cost.
• Clause 3.4(c), non-functional systems. If systems are found not to standard, or non-functional because of poor installation or maintenance, the SIA may encash the performance guarantee and/or blacklist the vendor for three years.

The tender does not set a separate penalty per missed complaint or per missed inspection.

A buyer's checklist for any FSM product, including ours:

Ask, rather than assume, how the mobile app behaves in low-signal villages. For measuring repeat visits and fix rates, see our guide to first-time fix rate and repeat visits.

Upvantix Field Service Management is designed to connect the customer request, dispatch decision, technician workflow and service outcome. It covers the installed base (customers and sites, installed equipment, asset history and service context), service operations (service requests, service work orders, priorities, commitments and status), scheduling and dispatch (a dispatch board, technician assignment and workload visibility) and field execution (mobile work, digital service forms, photos, notes and measurements, and service reports and signatures).

The workflow runs from request, through assessment of urgency, entitlement, history and required skills, to dispatch, completion with service evidence, and back to the installed-asset history. AI assistance in Upvantix FSM is designed to summarize installed-asset history, retrieve technical knowledge and help prepare service documentation while keeping decisions reviewable. Upvantix FSM is designed for India ops teams and deployment in your AWS environment.

For rooftop systems, see our guide to rooftop solar service under PM Surya Ghar. Talk to us about how your complaint queue, quarterly inspections and five-year pump records would map onto that service record.