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India currently ranks 5th globally in installed solar power capacity, boasting 84 GW installed capacity, and standing as the 3rd largest solar power generator. The nation aims to achieve 500 GW of renewable capacity by 2030, with solar contributing nearly 280 GW. However, meeting these targets would necessitate utilising 75,000 square kilometres of India’s landmass for solar generation.
Approximately 81 per cent of India’s current solar capacity derives from land-intensive ground-mounted installations. The substantial land footprint required for large-scale solar installations further complicates issues around large-scale land acquisition, with solar projects typically requiring between 3-5 acres per megawatt installed.
Disputes over land-use for solar and acquisition for solar projects is an emerging challenge due to competing demands on land-use change, land ownership and resulting community-led conflicts over siting of solar projects.
Concentration of solar energy in certain states, where six states from western and southern India generate 78 per cent of India’s solar, also leads to power-grid congestion and integration issues, hindering energy supply stability. Furthermore, remote rural locations of large solar farms increase challenges in power evacuation, necessitating extensive and costly distribution infrastructure.
To optimise resources and efficiency, newer business models are needed to address land-acquisition and long-distance power transmission issues.
Adopting mini-grid systems like agrivoltaics (agro-PV) offers a solution by optimising land use, reducing transmission distances and integrating energy production with local agriculture.
Agrivoltaics combines agriculture with solar energy production, installing panels on current and fallow agricultural land to generate renewable energy alongside cultivating crops beneath PV panels. This dual land-use system offers a sustainable and reliable solution to land scarcity and acquisition for solar energy, including localised transmission and distribution.
This approach improves land productivity by 35-73 per cent, providing a sustainable solution to land scarcity and acquisition for solar energy. It also offers indirect benefits such as reliable power, opportunities for scaling agro-processing businesses, and generating rural employment. Such income serves as a buffer against the financial distress associated with India's agricultural sector.
In agrivoltaics, solar panels are mounted 2-3 metres above ground to allow sufficient sunlight for crops underneath or in-between. This setup creates a microclimate in solar farms that protects crops from extreme weather conditions, reduces soil moisture evaporation and enhances solar panel efficiency by 2-6 degrees, thus extending their lifespan.
Combining energy generation with agriculture provides economic and environmental benefits. These can be in the form of assured long-term revenue for farmers through electricity sales or powering their own operations, reducing reliance on emission-intensive energy sources. It can also help with mitigation of risks from crop failures and reduced yields due to climate change impacts like heat waves, droughts and declining precipitation.
The agro-PV installations support both food and non-food crops. There are versatile designs of combining various food crops, such as rice, millets, oil-seeds with energy generation.
The most benefits are in horticultural crops, such as leafy greens, root vegetables, legumes and herbs. The shading and sheltering provided by the panels lowers ground temperature, which reduces water losses and increases productivity. For instance, tomato and lettuce see an increased yield of 11 per cent and 38 per cent, respectively; cotton yield rises by 33 per cent, resulting in a net income increase of up to 142 per cent.
The increased land productivity can offset any reduced yields, making such combined systems more profitable even at 10-30 per cent reduction in yield. Even during low yields, the combined income can be as much as 30-50 per cent higher.
India saw 320.48 million tonnes of horticulture produce in 2023. Nearly 40 per cent of this produce is wasted, which can be leveraged with development of cold storage infrastructure. The energy generated from agro-PV systems can also promote the development of cold storage facilities for dominant food crops beginning from the farm itself. Thereby, significantly reducing farm-produce and energy losses.
Integrating renewable resources with existing land-based resources requires collaborative efforts. Promotion by farmer producer organisations and self-help groups through resource pooling to reduce initial costs can be useful. Along with this, capacity-building programmes for operational management of agrivoltaic systems should be institutionalised.
Moreover, it is imperative to establish guidelines for agrovoltaics feasibility, address technical specifications, land-use policies and beneficial cropping practices. Leveraging the PM-KUSUM Scheme to incentivise local discoms for Agro-PV installations under component A, especially in high-demand agricultural states is required urgently.