Team: Tobias DEKKER, Rahul JOLLY, Michal POIZL, Komal SYED
1. Introduction
Often, a simple solution can have a profound impact on the life and well-being of the less fortunate inhabitants of our planet. Climate change and increased variance of weather conditions, now a reality, are threatening the lives of hundreds of millions of people who directly depend on farming as the main source of food / income. Solar irrigation pumping can address this issue in a cost-effective way and contribute to achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals – most importantly #2 – zero hunger, #7 – affordable and clean energy, #13 – climate action and #15 – life on land.
1.1 Introduction to solar irrigation pumping (SIP)
Solar energy in India has a huge potential. An installed capacity of 1,000 GW of solar could generate 1,500 TWh/ year, which is 1.5 times India’s current electricity demand. This 1,000 GW can be installed on 16,000 km2, only 0.5% of India’s landmass (Tobias Engelmeier et al., 2014). In 2013, almost 18% of India’s total electricity was used for agriculture (EMIS, 2014). Furthermore 55%, almost 263 million, of the working population works on agriculture & allied activities (Jyotika Sood, 2013). Hence proper and low cost irrigation can have a big impact in India. Solar irrigation pumps will play a definite part in changing India’s energy landscape. Solar pumps are viable in countries with adequate solar radiation and a significant need of pumping water for irrigation or other purposes, when the grid connection is unavailable or insufficient. Other main countries using solar irrigation pumps are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Kenya. Exact numbers of solar irrigation pumps in other countries are unknown but according to SunEdison (“SunEdison: The Global Market For Solar Irrigation Is Almost Limitless,” 2014) India is currently the largest user of solar irrigation pumps.
1.2. What is Solar Irrigation pump ?
A solar irrigation pump is a water pump that uses electricity produced from solar panels to pump the water (Kishore et al., 2014).
Figure 1: Solar Irrigation Pump schematic. Picture source: (KPMG, Shakti Foundation, 2014)
When going through Figure 1 from left to right the first part is the solar Photo Voltaic (PV) panels. There are different technologies and configurations of panels. The number of solar panels needed will be decided on basis of the pump size. Solar PV manufacturing industry in India has many players who provide similar quality and efficiency of the panels. Another difference except for the number of solar panels is if they have an (auto) tracker. An (auto) tracker is made so that the solar panels are moveable and will be in the right position to capture the full amount of sun rays. The next part of the schematic is the water pump. The amount of water that can be pumped depends on the amount of input fuel (diesel or electricity), the efficiency of the pump and also the head. The head is the difference between the level of the tank and the groundwater level, so if the water is deeper lesser output is expected.
1.3. Why solar irrigation pumps?
India uses more than 4 billion litres of diesel and around 85 million tons of coal per annum to support water pumping for irrigation (KPMG, Shakti Foundation, 2014). Replacement of 1 million diesel pumps with solar pumps would result in diesel use mitigation of 9.4 billion litres over the life cycle of solar pumps which translates into a CO2 emission abatement of 25.3 M Tonnes (KPMG, Shakti Foundation, 2014)
Table 1:Differences between Diesel, Electric and Solar Pumps[2]
++ : very positive, – – : very negative, + : positive, -: negative
There is also the possibility of manual pumps. Manual pumps are very rarely used for irrigation purposes since a large amount of water is needed for irrigation, so this will cost a lot of manual force to pump up this amount of water. The number of solar irrigation pumps are quickly increasing, the government plans to install 100,000 (1 lakh) solar pumps before 2020. There were 11,626 solar pumps in India on 31 March 2014 (Press Trust of India, 2014). Most of these pumps have been deployed in the last few years.
Except from the above stated advantages and disadvantages there is one more major advantage:
- Perfect match between solar hours and usage: normally farmers use the pumps during the day when the sun is shining. In the Monsoon season, there is less possibility and need of using SIP due to heavy rains.
There is also an additional disadvantage:
- Over-extraction of ground water leading to water table depletion: Low or almost no cost of pumping is an opportunity for many to pump more water than needed. This could be prevented by offering incentives to farmers to not pump the water above their need, which is not implemented in many states.
2. Experience of SIP in Rajasthan, India
2.1 Introduction
Rajasthan is the pioneer state in installing solar irrigation pumps in India. Rajasthan is the state with the highest solar irradiance in India 6-7 kWh/m2/day (Dr. Dinesh Kumar Goyal, 2013) and approximately twice as much yearly radiation per square meter in Germany (SolarGIS, 2015). Approximately 15,000 pumps have been installed until now as a part of the subsidy scheme managed by the horticulture department. Farmers were interested in this scheme since only 14% of the capital cost had to be paid by them of the total cost of 5 lakhs (Dr. Dinesh Kumar Goyal, 2013), approximately $7800 (XE, 2015).
Table 2: Amount of pumps deployed with the Rajasthan Solar Pumping program (Dr. Dinesh Kumar Goyal, 2013)
A survey was conducted on 96 farmers. Of the farmers in the sample 44% had one year experience with the SIP, while 34% had two years of experience and 22% had three years of experience
2.2 Beneficiary
Sample clearly shows that most of the farmers with large landholdings have managed to deploy solar pumps. The average landholding was found to be 7.9 hectare (Ha.) while the average of land size for all farmers in Rajasthan is 3.65 Ha. 73 farmers from the sample also had an additional pump (electric, diesel or both) in addition to the solar pump. 15 farmers even had multiple solar pumps, with one farmer having 4 solar pumps. In the sample there were no farmers that bought a SIP without making use of the subsidy scheme. This means that all the solar pumps are bought by farmers under the solar pumping program run by the department of horticulture of the government of Rajasthan.
2.3 Utilization of Solar Pumps
It was found that on a summer day the solar pump delivers its peak output for about 7.5 hours and in winters it reduces to 5.5 hours. In monsoon season, which lasts for not more than a month in Rajasthan, a solar pump delivers its peak output only for half an hour. As per the data, a solar pump delivers its peak discharge for about 2000 hours in a year. Farmers use roughly 1500 hours from these and the rest is surplus power which gets wasted. Therefore the current utilization of the pump is approximately 70%. The range of utilization of pumps across the farmers ranges from 26% to 100%. Solar pumps used to distribute stored water in the canal command area have a higher utilization (75%) than the solar pumps used for pumping groundwater (67%).
2.4 Cropping patterns
In Monsoon the majority of the land is rain fed; after that the solar pump is most popular way of irrigation. Cluster bean, locally known as Guwar, is most grown rain fed crop, while using the solar pump cotton is the most grown crop. In winter the solar pump is used as the main irrigation source, it irrigates more land than diesel or electric pumps. In winter mostly wheat is grown. In summer the amount of crops grown is very low because of the shortage of water; of the crops that are grown are grown mostly using the solar pumps. The annual crops are mostly horticultural crops grown with the help of solar pump. Overall it can be seen that the solar pump is used for the biggest area of land. It is used for both high value and non-high value crops. Solar pumps also helped to irrigate 39 hectares of land that were not irrigated before.
2.5 Farmers Satisfaction and opinion
Most farmers are very satisfied with the pump, claiming the pump operates better than a diesel or electric pump. Most farmers don’t perform any maintenance except for cleaning. 20% of the farmers had to have their system repaired. It’s observed that almost half of the farmers would buy a pump if they would get only 50% subsidy and no one would if they would not get any subsidy at all. Two third of the farmers would give up their grid connection if they had to in order to get a solar pump. 95% of the farmers, who gained enough knowledge to answer the question, say that the pump works better than their diesel or electric pump.
2.6 Conclusion
The solar irrigation pump programme in Rajasthan can be called a success. The farmers are happy with the pump. The study has shown that farmers are using their solar pumps for a large part of the year and that it is actually used for the biggest amount of irrigation, although some farmers had electric and diesel pumps too. This scheme is successful and can be rolled out in other states too but with some improvements. Currently there is no real incentive to stop excessive pumping of groundwater. This could be improved by offering the farmers a (financial) incentive to not pump too much water.
3. A Financial Product in SIP to Speed up deployment
This section discusses the possibility of supplying SIPs with a bank loan so that the subsidy per pump set can be decreased and with the same total amount of subsidy more pumps can be provided.
3.1 Background
What is found by many to be the biggest disadvantage and the ultimate reason for the slow progress of solar irrigation pumps is the high initial investment cost. A solar irrigation pump system is approximately 15-30 times more expensive in the initial investment cost than a diesel or an electric pump.
The factors that are needed for growth of agriculture, like electricity, cold storages and good road network, are more available in the Western states of India – such as Gujarat and Rajasthan than in the East in states such as Bihar. These factors have an effect on what kind of crops are grown, affecting the optimal volume of irrigation. This section will distinguish the farmers in the West who are generalized to use low cost electricity for pumping water and farmers in the East who are currently not using any kind of irrigation technique or expensive irrigation like diesel pumps.
3.2 East of India: Irrigation Service Provider
To solve the issue of the expensive irrigation which leads to under irrigation of the crop, irrigation can be provided by SIPs connected to a PVC buried pipeline network. The water can be provided to the farmers via the pipeline network for a cost of Rs 12/katha – this is less than half of the current price and according to the experts, farmers would be able to afford this rate. The owner of the pump will be the irrigation service provider, this can be a farmer who doesn’t own any land who will then operate the pump as a fulltime job. Irrigation service provider will manage which farmers get water when and will keep account of which land was irrigated as so to accordingly bill the farmer later. This landless farmer will sell all the water since there is no connection to an electricity grid and the farmer does not own any land to irrigate.
A cooperative is proposed so that the cost of the pipeline network will be shared by the different irrigation service providers, reducing the total costs and providing an extra advantage: it is easier to sell the water since the farmers who want to buy the water have a greater water supply security, even if one pump fails there will be enough other pumps to back it up. In the past it has been seen that pumps got stolen or destroyed if only a few people benefitted from a solar irrigation pump subsidy scheme. In this case more people will benefit so the chances of theft or damage will decrease. Further inputs and outcomes are shown in Table 3.
Table 3: Inputs and outcomes of the Financial Model for the East
A cost of Rs 7.5 Lakh (approximately $12,000) will be incurred for the off grid system. The system will consist of 8 kW solar panels, 7.5 hp pump, inverters and 1000 m of PVC buried pipeline (Neha Durga and Vipson Ltd., 2015). The pump will be installed with 8kW panels this will be sufficient in the East to supply the water since the water levels are shallow. This system will be able to supply 4 kathas per hour of irrigation and 2250 hours per year of irrigation can be supplied.
3.3 West India: selling solar electricity to the grid
At the Charanka Solar Park in Gujarat, it was measured that, per 1kW of installed solar panels 1620 kWh (units) were produced per year (Prasanth Elavarthi, 2014). A 7.5 hp pump required 8 kW input to run for the full 100% and in order to supply 8 kW during the majority of the year the system should have 12 kW installed solar panels since it was seen that solar PV will only reach 66% of the installed capacity as real output (State Load Despatch Centre (SLDC), 2015).
Farmers would still need to use the pump for the irrigation of their crops. Estimated is that farmers will use the pump for 2 peak hours per day, this would mean between 12-2PM. If the pump is used at different times the farmer will use more hours to get the same water output but the effect on the amount of exported electricity is the same since these hours would also generate less electricity. They would use this for 300 days in a year.
It will be beneficial for farmers to save water (so to use the pump less) by for example using drip irrigation technique instead of flooding. For flooding, bigger quantities of water and more hours of pumping are needed and this will reduce the amount of electricity exported hence increasing the payback period.
Since electricity is highly subsidized, utilities would benefit as well from not having to pay for this subsidy anymore. Farmers in Gujarat pay 60 paisa per unit while the unit cost of power supply in 2012-2013 was 485 paisa (Planning commission government of India, 2014, p. 171). The subsidy per farmer is approximately Rs 40,000 per year (S.B. Khyalia (MD MGVCL), 2015). The utilities could pay upfront up to 7 years of subsidy if the farmer decides to take the pump off the grid, which would mean 7 years of not paying subsidy while the lifetime of the pump is 25 years, creating a win-win situation for the farmer and for the utilities
Table 4: Inputs and outcomes for the model in the West
Central government currently gives a subsidy of Rs 40,000 per Wp of the solar panels (Shilp Verma, 2015). As showcased before to run the pump properly 12 kW solar panels should be installed for a 7.5 hp pump. This would mean a subsidy of 4.8 lakh rupees could be given but only 2 lakhs are needed in this case. There is also no need of subsidy from the state government. This would decrease the subsidy normally given by central and state government from 70% (currently in Rajasthan) to around 20%.
Farmers will be able to cover at least 5% of the initial investment cost themselves, in Rajasthan applicants for a subsidized solar irrigation pump need to pay 30% upfront (RHDS, 2015). The rest of the money that is needed would be made available by a loan. It should be noted that selling power to the grid is not a fulltime job like being an Irrigation Service provider. Farmers will still have water to irrigate their fields and can so still earn the same amount as they earn now.
In less than seven years the farmer will be able to repay the loan and from then enjoy a salary of more than Rs 1,00,000 per year on top of the standard farmer’s salary.
In the west, a cooperative model would also have benefits, except from being able to buy material together a big benefit would be to find a buyer of the electricity more easily. Buyers could be cold storages for example. Also for utilities it would be better to get the electricity from one single point than from multiple small points and this would also decrease the transaction cost.
5. Conclusion
Diesel and electric pumps have been around for decades while solar irrigation pumps (SIPs) are relatively new and are mostly installed in the last few years. SIP is a disruptive technology that can highly benefit the Indian economy and situation of farmers offering zero marginal costs. The negative consequence of installing SIPs is groundwater depletion due to excessive pumping. Solutions for this problem can be in form of incentives to not pump excess water and selling excess electricity to the grid.
In general it can be concluded that, when paid attention to the negative consequences of solar irrigation pumps, these pumps have a bright future in India. The speed of implementation can be increased by offering farmers bigger pumps, so that they will not have to use a diesel or electric pump as well and offering them a viable loan/lease product. The grid has to be modernized to allow renewables into the grid since a large share of renewables will be present in the year 2022 as per the government’s plan of having 15% of electricity consumption from renewables by then.
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