Project Title: Promoting Solar Irrigation Pumps (SIPs) as Energy-Water-Livelihoods
Solution
Project lead: Tushaar Shah
Leader Center: International Water Management Institution (IWMI)
SRP/Theme mapped into: SRP Irrigation
Title: Promoting Solar Irrigation Pumps (SIPs) as Energy-Water-Livelihoods Solution
What is the outcome of the research: (200 words):
US $ 67 million allocated by Government of India in 2014 Union Budget for solar pump
promotion.
Long considered capital intensive, solar pumps have suddenly begun to gain popularity in
irrigation use in India. State governments—such as Rajasthan, Tamilnadu, Karnataka—have
been trying to promote solar pumps by offering 80-90 percent capital cost subsidy. Between
them, Rajasthan and Tamilnadu will likely have over 30,000 solar pumps by 2015. IWMI-Tata
research shows that the current solar pump promotion strategy is limited and has several flaws:
[a] it creates perverse incentives for solar PV industry to pursue a high-margin-low-volume
strategy and constantly put up panel prices to maximize their gains from subsidy; [b] it limits
opportunities for creating a broad and deep open market for solar pumps; [c] subsidies tend to get
captured by the elite and the powerful; and [d] because of high subsidies, governments limit the
size of the pump; as a result, solar pumps supplement electric pumps rather than substitute them.
In sum, the current strategy promotes solar pumps merely as an irrigation solution.
IWMI-Tata research has shown that solar pumps can actually be a composite Energy-WaterLivelihoods-Carbon solution provided a more nuanced promotional strategy were deployed as
outlined in the table above. In eastern India, solar pump promotion strategy should ideally aim at
catalysing vibrant local irrigation service markets by providing young farmers large pumps
complete with buried water distribution network. In groundwater depleted western and southern
India, it should wean farmers away from grid power and incentivize them to ‘grow’ solar power
as a lucrative crop to be marketed to the grid as MW-scale solar plants do.
These ideas have been presented to two successive Finance Ministers of Government of India:
Mr P Chidambaram in 2013 and Mr Arun Jaitley in 2014. While the promise of solar pumps has
been taken on board, the nuance of IWMI-recommended strategy still remain to be grasped.
What outputs produced in the 3 preceding years resulted in that outcome:
Shah, T and Verma, S. 2014. Addressing water management. In Bibek Debroy, Ashley J. Tellis
and Reece Trevor (Eds). Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for PostElection Reform, Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, pp. 185206.
Shah, T. and Kishore, A. 2012. Solar-powered pump irrigation and India’s groundwater
economy: a preliminary discussion of opportunities and threats. IWMI-Tata Water Policy
Research Highlight, 26.
Tiwary, R. 2012. An experiment in solar power based community tube-wells for irrigation in
Nalanda District, Bihar [India]: an assessment. IWMI-Tata Water Policy Research
Highlight, 27.
Tewari, N. P. 2012. Solar irrigation pumps: the Rajasthan [India] experience. IWMI-Tata Water
Policy Research Highlight, 35.
Shah, T. 2013. Proposal for Solarizing India’s Groundwater Economy by Redesigning
Incentives for Solar Pumps. Presentation made at Pre-budget consultation meeting,
Finance Minister, Govt. of India, at Delhi, 2nd January, 2013
Kishore, A., Shah, and Tewari, N.D. 2014. Solar irrigation pumps: Farmers’ experience and
state policy in Rajasthan. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol.49(10): 55-62.
What partners helped in producing the outcome and what was their role?





Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mumbai
Solar Irrigation Pump Vendors in particular Clero Energy and SunEdison,
Farmers and Pump Owners in Rajasthan and Bihar
Avinash Kishore of IFPRI
Rakesh Tewari (Bihar) and Nidhi Tewari (Rajasthan)
Who used the output?
IWMI’s aim is to influence and shape the national debate on how solar pumps can rewrite the
rules of India’s groundwater economy. Center for Science and Environment, New Delhi is
leading the solar policy debate in home products and IWMI-Tata Program is leading it in the
irrigation playing field. In that sense, the IWMI-Tata outputs are a contribution to the national
debate. In specific terms, the output is majorly utilized by the policy makers and donors while
designing and approving the schemes and by manufacturers to improve the product bundle.
2
Users include Government of India, SunEdison India, BRLPS, SRTT, Tata Solar. A specific
proposal has been submitted by ITP to Bihar Rural Livelihoods Project (BRLPS) to demonstrate
how subsidizing large-pumps with buried distribution can produce better livelihoods outcome
compared to subsidizing large number of smaller pumps without distribution system. A similar
proposal has been developed for SRTT and Tata Solar as well as SunEdison to demonstrate how
net metering and assured power purchase through feedback tariff can change the incentives and
motivations of irrigators.
How was the output used (or will be used in the future)?
The outputs were:






Presented in IWMI-Tata Annual Partners Meet 2012;
Published as IWMI-Tata Highlights and Economic and Political Weekly
Presented to two successive Finance Ministers of Government of India
Used to develop proposals for setting up pilot demonstration projects in Bihar and
Gujarat
Will be used for presentations in three sessions in Stockholm Water Week, 2014
Used to develop a 8 minute video-film on solar pump impacts in Bihar
What is the evidence for this outcome?
The Finance Minister of India announced in his budget speech, launch of a scheme for solar
power driven agricultural pump sets and water pumping stations for energizing one lakh pumps
and a sum of Rs. 400 crores (66 million USD ) was allocated for the same.
http://southasia.oneworld.net/news/indian-govt-allocates-rs-400-cr-for-solar-pump-sets , July 15,
2014
What lessons did you learn in this process?
Policy makers tend to process new ideas and recommendations for their novelty and intuitive
appeal but in a perfunctory and somewhat gross manner. IWMI-Tata experience has been that its
communications and presentations have persuaded the two Finance Ministers about the need to
support solar pumps for irrigation; however, our more detailed workings of the likely impacts of
alternative designs of subsidy systems was largely lost on them. This was not so much because
they were incapable of understanding the nuance but because they are required to evaluate so
many ideas and proposals that they did not have the time and inclination to master the details of
our proposals. Demonstrations and pilots seem to be the only way to promote our detailed policy
proposals.
3