Why We Measure a Project at Year Four, Not Year One
Blog · Impact measurement
The sector reports what it installed. The number that matters is what is still running.
Most CSR projects are reported at year one: systems installed, people reached, ribbons cut. Rural solar usually fails later, when maintenance lapses and batteries degrade within two years. TREEI measures Mission URJA at year four instead, publishing every village from its commissioning day on a public dashboard: 35,85,000+ kWh generated since 2022.
Figures as of October 2026 from our live public dashboard.
What does the sector usually report?
The standard impact report is written in year one. It counts what went in: panels installed, households connected, people reached. Those are real numbers, and they are the easiest to produce, because on installation day everything works.
The number the sector rarely reports is the one that tells a funder whether the money lasted: how many systems are still running, maintained by the community, years after the installer left.
Why is year one the wrong moment to judge?
Decentralised solar fails late. The typical pattern is a working system at commissioning, deferred maintenance in year one, uncollected contributions and degrading batteries in year two, and a dormant system soon after. A report written at year one cannot see any of that.
“The challenge is not the first light. It is the hundredth night.”From our case study on village-owned power
What do the numbers look like over time?
Power generated by Mission URJA villages each year, from our public dashboard. Over the same period, villages live at year-end grew from 2 to 41, installed capacity from 92.2 kW to 1,404 kW, and carbon avoided from 27.5 to 1,105 tCO₂e a year. Cumulatively, the villages have produced over 35,85,000 kWh of clean power since 2022.
Why year four?
Mission URJA lit its first two villages in 2022. In 2026 they are in their fourth year, past the window in which most rural solar goes dark. That is the point at which we think a project deserves to be judged: after a full battery cycle of wear, after several monsoons, after the novelty is gone and only the Samiti, the technician and the corpus remain.
So that is the standard we hold ourselves to. Every village is counted from its own record on our dashboard, from the day it was commissioned, and stays counted. A CSR partner can open the same numbers we do.
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Frequently asked questions
Why measure CSR projects at year four?
Rural solar typically fails after year one, when maintenance lapses and batteries degrade, so year-four results show whether the investment lasted.
How much power has Mission URJA generated?
Over 35,85,000 kWh of clean power since 2022, tracked village by village on TREEI's public dashboard.
Where can partners see Mission URJA data?
On TREEI's live public dashboard at treei.org/dashboard, programme by programme and year by year.