On the Ground
Projects Across India
Solar installations, R&D facilities and community projects documented over 15 years.
Photos will appear here once uploaded to /public/solar-photos/
Discovery Channel travelled across India to document Su-Kam's solar projects — the installations, the communities they powered, and the technology that made it possible. The documentary "Sun Fuel" stands as the most significant external validation of Kunwer Sachdev's solar vision.
At a time when solar power was dismissed by most of the Indian industry as impractical for domestic use, Su-Kam was already proving otherwise — village by village, rooftop by rooftop, patent by patent.
The film shows what most business stories miss: the human impact. The school that got power for the first time. The hospital that stopped losing patients during night surgeries. The farmer who ran a water pump without a diesel generator. These were Su-Kam's real products — not just hardware, but outcomes.
Sun Fuel — Su-Kam Solar Channel / Discovery Channel
These are not marketing claims. Each milestone is documented by press coverage, patents, and the communities that benefited.
Solar installations, R&D facilities and community projects documented over 15 years.
Photos will appear here once uploaded to /public/solar-photos/
In 2006, solar power was not a consumer product in India. It was a government subsidy programme. The systems were expensive, fragile and designed by engineers who had never installed one in a place without roads, running water or a local technician.
Kunwer Sachdev looked at that reality and made a different calculation. He had spent years designing inverters for Indian conditions — extreme heat, voltage fluctuation, dust, humidity. That engineering foundation was exactly what solar needed. The gap between laboratory solar technology and fieldworthy solar technology was an engineering problem, and engineering problems were what Su-Kam solved.
The result was a Solar PCU built for India's reality: it worked in 55°C heat, survived monsoon humidity, tolerated the wildly unstable grid voltages found in rural areas, and could be maintained by a local electrician without factory support. The Discovery Channel documentary captured this engineering-meets-reality story better than any product brochure could.
What the camera showed was the other side of the balance sheet: families who no longer bought kerosene, schools that could extend learning hours, clinics that kept medicines refrigerated. Kunwer Sachdev's solar technology did not just replace a power source. It changed what was possible in communities that had been told to wait for the government grid — which sometimes meant waiting forever.
"The inverter taught us how to build for India. Solar gave us the reason to."
— Recalled by a former associate from a product review session, circa 2008
Today, through Su-Vastika, Kunwer Sachdev continues building the next generation of solar storage technology — lithium battery systems, hybrid inverters and grid-scale BESS installations that carry the same design philosophy forward: engineer for Indian conditions, price for Indian pockets, and let the product speak.
— By a former associate of Kunwer Sachdev
111 news articles, press features and project stories covering 25 years of solar and power innovation.