ICAR - Central Arid Zone Research Institute

A meeting on prospects of solar farming in Rajasthan was organized at Central Arid Zone Research Institute (CAZRI), Jodhpur. Dr. J.S. Samra, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA) steered this meeting along with scientists of CAZRI; representatives from solar power plants around Jodhpur, Tata solar, Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation (RREC); entrepreneurs and progressive farmers. Dr. Samra hoped that abundant availability of solar energy in Rajasthan and present trend of expansion of solar power generation will offer greater scope to famers in this region to allocate some part of their land for establishing PV modules for greater returns.
Earlier, Dr. Samra visited a fully functional solar power plant (5MV) at Tinwari. As large land areas (2-2.5 ha/1MW) are used for this purpose and 6-16 m interspace is left between PV arrays besides use of 20000 litre of water to clean a PV panel block (0.5MV); there is ample scope of growing herbs of various uses. He also took a round of CAZRI Solar Yard. He appreciated the efforts of the institute in developing a range of novel devices for agricultural use.
Dr. M.M. Roy, Director CAZRI expressed that there is a very good scope of replacing electric and diesel operated pumps for irrigation by the solar PV pumps in near future.
Dr. P.C. Pande, Head of Division at CAZRI presented a comparison on different types of solar PV modules and scope about solar power distribution through gridded and off-grid networks.
Dr. P. Santra, Senior Scientist, CAZRI and Coordinator of the meeting proposed a vote of thanks.
(Source: CAZRI, Jodhpur)