Evaluation and Impact Assessment of Solar Irrigation Pumps - A deep dive in Haryana & Chhattisgarh

1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The solar pumping segment in India has seen significant growth in recent years which is primarily driven by both Central and State Government subsidies, ranging from 30 to 95%. The initial thrust emerged from the target of 1 million pumps (by 2020-21) set by the Central Government in 2014-15. Agricultural electricity consumption has increased from 81,673 GWh in 2001-02 to 228,172 GWh in 2019-20. Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) has launched the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahaabhiyan (PM-KUSUM) scheme in 2019 to provide support to 20 Lakh farmers to set up solar pumps. The scheme has three major components as illustrated in the figure. In the Budget for 2020-21, expansion of the scheme was announced, which was later approved by Government with the inclusion of feeder level solarization as a new variant under Component-C, with the expansion, the targeted solar capacity addition under the scheme has increased to 30.8 GW.

India has the world’s most arable land at 17.5 lakh / sq. km. These lands are irrigated via over 30 million agriculture pump sets, out of which, 20 million pump sets are connected to the grid and around 10 million pumps are diesel pumps. The number of solar pumps installed is very negligible compared to the grid-connected ones and the diesel ones. The total number of solar pumps installed today is about 3,90,000 pumps which have been mostly deployed in the last five years.

Majorly, the solar pumps are installed by State Renewable Energy Development Agencies with capital subsidy assistance from the Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE) and the state government. Further, the solar pumps installed in India is concentrated in a few states namely Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Bihar. Figure-3 shows the number of pumps installed over the years in India.