The government will announce an incentive scheme at the seventh AgriVoltaics World Conference in Delhi on October 21-23. This plan includes a dedicated AgriPV component under PM-KUSUM 2.0. Many firms now test installing solar panels 18-20 ft above ground, which lets farmers grow crops and use machinery on the same land.
The government is expected to announce an incentive scheme at the upcoming seventh AgriVoltaics World Conference in Delhi on October 21-23. It has already said that PM-KUSUM 2.0 -- the proposed second phase of the agriculture solarisation programme -- will have a dedicated AgriPV, or agrivoltaics, component.
AgriPV is still at the demonstration and experimentation stage in India. There are more than a dozen pilots, using markedly different configurations, crops and business arrangements. SunSeed, GroSolar, Khare Energy, Jain Irrigation and Sahyadri Farms are among the organisations experimenting with the technology. TERI's recent assessment of the country's AgriPV potential lists SunSeed's 1.4-MW Parbhani installation and Nashik project, and GroSolar and Jain Irrigation pilots, among other projects.
The basic idea is deceptively simple: produce food and electricity on the same piece of land.
The difficulty is in ensuring one doesn't compromise the other.
An emerging trend is to install solar panels 18-20 ft above ground on pillars. The elevation combined with appropriate module technology, row spacing and panel architecture can give crops more usable light while allowing tractors and other farm machinery to operate below the array. It also makes it possible to grow taller crops and perennial crops such as vines and fruit trees. In a conventional solar plant the crops are typically squeezed into the spaces between the arrays of panels.
A recent visit to the solar-agriculture farm of the Dayalbagh Educational Institute, near Agra, facilitated by the Earth Journalism Network, offered a glimpse into the working of elevated AgriPV.
The experimental farm of BAIF Development Research Foundation, near Pune | Photo Credit: M Ramesh
Commissioned in 2020, the 200-kW installation on about 1.3 acres was supported partly by a government grant of about ₹3.2 crore. At the time, it cost about ₹65 a Wp -- roughly 30 per cent higher than a conventional solar installation.
The panels are mounted on pillars about 18 ft above the ground, leaving a large agricultural working space underneath. The project uses single-column structures and tracking, and the crops grown include wheat, spinach, cauliflower, carrot, tomato, brinjal and pulses.
Half of the solar capacity is linked to a battery energy storage system. The other half supplies the institute and nearby facilities through a microgrid.
The institute recently added an EV charging station, which can hook up 20 cars at a time, according to Prof D Bhagwan Das, the head of the project. The electricity is supplied at a subsidised ₹7 a kWh.
The system generates around 4 kWh per kW per day, according to Das, leaving the institute self-sufficient in meeting its electricity needs. The farm's produce is sold in neighbouring villages at "highly subsidised prices".
Das says the institute is willing to transfer the know-how free of cost. Officials at the institute also say that more than 100 farmers have adopted its AgriPV technology.
Viability
The next stage of the AgriPV journey, therefore, is not so much about proving that solar panels and crops can coexist but figuring out how the combination can pay well. Nimish Prabhukhanolkar, CTO of SunSeed, sees the emergence of elevated AgriPV as significant.
"It is good to see -- in recent years -- 100 per cent land use of solar and 100 per cent land use for farming via elevated infrastructure," Prabhukhanolkar says.
SunSeed has a 1.4-MW elevated AgriPV installation at Parbhani for horticultural crops and a 250-kW one at Sahyadri FPO, Nashik, for table grapes.
Prabhukhanolkar makes the interesting observation that technology is no longer the only missing piece. Who owns the solar plant? How should the contract be worked to benefit both farmer and solar developer? What role should technology companies play? Will there be a new class of AgriPV independent power producers and developers? And would a specialised horticulture company invest in AgriPV infrastructure rather than conventional agricultural infrastructure?
These questions, he says, need to be resolved over the next three to five years.
There is also a crop selection issue. High-carbohydrate crops such as grains and pulses are less attractive under partial shade, Prabhukhanolkar says. Flowers, berries and some fruit orchards appear to be better matches.
The parameters
The Renkube AgriPV pilot at Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University, in Hyderabad, provides useful numbers.
TERI monitored the 10.8-kWp installation over two years. The system uses semi-transparent PV panels installed about 10.5 ft above ground, with about 10 ft spacing between rows. Fifteen crop varieties were tested across the rabi, zaid and kharif seasons.
The results are encouraging. Average crop yield was 97.8 per cent of open field yield. In summer, it was actually better at 100.6 per cent, including spinach at 104.2 per cent and amaranthus at 101.9 per cent. The report attributes this partly to reduced heat stress under the panels.
The economics are even more striking. For a modelled 2.5-hectare farm, TERI estimates annual income of about ₹9.31 lakh from conventional agriculture, compared with ₹54.62 lakh under a standard AgriPV configuration and ₹75.62 lakh, or 8.12 times more, under the Renkube configuration.
But this is just a techno-economic projection; TERI explicitly says the Renkube technology is not yet commercially available and the assumptions require validation through pilots.
The report nevertheless makes an interesting comparison. Its model assumes that Renkube AgriPV would require 26.5 per cent more investment per MW than conventional ground-mounted solar, but could produce 36.6 per cent more annual electricity, helped by elevated bifacial panels and reduced soiling losses.
And TERI's conclusion is quite specific: an agriculture-first design should use elevated structures at least 3 m above ground, 2.5-3 m row spacing and appropriate crop selection.
Multiple designs
The most important lesson, perhaps, emerging from the Indian experiments is the availability of many forms of AgriPV. A visit to the experimental farm of the BAIF Development Research Foundation, near Pune, demonstrated this well. The configurations include vertical, tilted, close to the ground, and elevated AgriPV.
A vineyard will require a different structure compared with a vegetable farm. A semi-arid farm will have different requirements compared with a humid tropical one.
Horses for courses.
This is also why the temptation to judge AgriPV by its higher cost per MW misses the point. The relevant comparison is between the value generated by the same piece of land under agriculture alone, solar alone, and agriculture-plus-solar.
And it goes beyond just electricity and crop revenue. Shade can reduce heat stress. Solar structures can alter water requirements. Drip irrigation, rainwater harvesting, storage and even EV charging can become part of an integrated farm-energy system. The business model is the real frontier.
The government's likely move to bring AgriPV into PM-KUSUM 2.0 could, therefore, be significant. AgriPV can work. Indeed, it may become inevitable as India tries to add solar capacity without eating up productive agricultural land.
And perhaps that is where the panels belong -- up above the ground so high.