The Government of India launched the “Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission” (JNNSM) in January 2010. The JNSSM overall target of 100 GW of grid-connected solar power by 2022. SIPs formed only a small portion of JNSSM work in the early phases due to the high cost of installation.
The Government of India released the “National Solar Pumping Scheme for Irrigation and Drinking” in 2014, with a target to support 1 million SIPs by 2020-21. In 2018, the Government of India announced its Kisan Urja Shakti evam Utthan Mahabhiyan (KUSUM) program for solarizing agriculture. Currently, there are over 200,000 solar irrigation pumps in India.
Gujarat launched a scheme called Surya Kisan Yojana (SKY) to solarize electric feeders supplying electricity to groundwater tubewells. So far, around 80 or so SKY feeders has been solarized. SoLAR project with work in Gujarat in close collaboration with GERMI to understand institutional aspects of the SKY scheme.
Distribution of SIPs in India (1 dot = 100 pumps)
Contact information
Yashodha Yashodha, (Postdoctoral Fellow – Impact Evaluation, IWMI-Delhi)
email: [email protected]