Solar Pumps and Water-Energy Nexus in Gujarat, India: First Assessment of the World’s Largest Pilot on Grid-connected Solar Irrigation Pumps

Abstract

The epicentre of Gujarat’s perverse nexus between electricity subsidy and groundwater depletion lies in its legacy of 485,000 unmetered tubewell owners who have fiercely resisted metering for 20 years. These comprise 40 percent of Gujarat’s irrigation connections but account for 49 percent of agricultural load, 71 percent of energy use in groundwater abstraction and 90 percent of farm power subsidies. Suryashakti Kisan Yojana (SKY), a large, state-wide pilot project which solarised and net-metered 4215 tubewells and began paying farmers for evacuating surplus solar energy, has been enthusiastically embraced by unmetered and metered farmers alike. SKY promises politically acceptable resolution of a wicked energy-water conundrum that afflicts much of India and west Asia. Mainstreaming SKY can significantly reduce groundwater overdraft, GHG emissions and subsidy burden. It will increase farm incomes while radically improving energy-water accounting and management. Gujarat government should invest in compulsory, free-of-cost solarisation of tubewells. We show that doing so is profitable for government and beneficial for farmers, climate and environment.

Water-energy-food-environment nexus in action: Global review of precepts and practice

“…During 2018-2019, Gujarat's SKY project replaced 4,215 existing grid-powered tubewells with net-metered SIPs, giving their owners a 25-year power purchase guarantee. SKY has demonstrated multiple 'nexus gains': (a) all unmetered tubewells that solarized got metered with active farmer cooperation; (b) their owners willingly let go of grid-power subsidy they had enjoyed for decades; (c) SKY farmers now enjoy year-round, daytime quality power instead of unreliable, nightly power they had suffered all along; (d) majority of SKY farmers turned from net energy buyers to sellers and began earning significantly from energy sales; (e) power purchase at remunerative price incentivized energy-water conservation; (f) power utilities gained because payout on solar energy purchase from farmers is a fraction of savings in extant grid-power subsidy; (g) they were also happy because power distribution losses declined significantly and distributed solar generation got a boost; (h) CO 2 emissions from irrigation reduced to zero as solar energy replaced coal-based grid power; and (i) while 2/3rd of solar generation by off-grid SIPs goes waste, all energy generated by SKY tubewells gets fully utilized by farmers or other consumers on the grid (Shah and Rai, 2021). 3 SKY exemplifies a win-win pathway to transform an electricity-powered unregulated groundwater sub-economy into a solar-powered regulated one and establish necessary preconditions for achieving the 'nexus optima'.…”

“…A new concern, however, was that with their free, uninterrupted, reliable, daytime power, SIPs will exacerbate India's groundwater crisis. Inspired by a small action research experiment in the village Dhundi (Shah and Rai, 2021), in 2018 the Gujarat government launched SKY, 1 a state-wide pilot project that replaced 4,215 grid-powered irrigation pumps with net-metered SIPs with a Power Purchase Guarantee. This done, the government began paying SKY farmers for their surplus solar energy under a 25-year contract.…”

“…The results were spectacular. A major concern was if SKY would be able to onboard legacy unmetered tubewellswhich were 40% of Gujarat's tubewells but accounted for 49% of agricultural load, 71% of energy use in irrigation and 90% of farm power subsidies around 2015 (Shah and Rai, 2021) and whose owners had fiercely resisted metering for over 20 years. But unmetered farmers onboarded SKY as enthusiastically as metered ones; moreover, three years later, previously unmetered SKY tubewells had significantly reduced their energy consumption/HP to increase earnings from energy sales (ibid).…”