States may be nudged to go for agrivoltaic solar projects

New Delhi: The renewable energy ministry is planning a central sector scheme to encourage states to adopt agrivoltaic solar projects, secretary Santosh Kumar Sarangi said on Monday, asserting that the support could also be provided under an existing scheme.

"We are planning for a central sector scheme which will support it and probably we will make it a part of one of our existing schemes as and when those schemes are getting revised," Sarangi said while addressing the media on the Agrivoltaics World Conference to be held on October 21-23.

The conference on agrivoltaics will be hosted by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy with support from the 'Indo-German Cooperation on AgriVoltaics'. On the plan for the scheme, the ministry is in talks with the finance ministry to work out a mechanism to incentivise states to adopt different kinds of agrivoltaic models.


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The civil infrastructure associated with the agrivoltaic solar projects makes them 25-30% more costly compared with ground-mounted solar projects. The objective of the government will be to meet this gap. Agrivoltaic projects work by elevating solar panels high above the ground or spacing them wide apart, which allows power generation without restricting farming.

States have been showing a lot of interest in this and in addition to the pilot that the Centre is doing, states such as Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra have been trying to actively facilitate this.

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With states' active participation and the Centre's support, the ministry expects this capacity addition in agrivoltaic projects to go beyond 5 GW in the next 3-4 years across the country, Sarangi said. Renewable energy minister Pralhad Joshi had, in September, said the next phase of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthan Mahabhiyan (PM-KUSUM) scheme could include a dedicated component for agrivoltaics.

The total potential mapped so far in the country for solar agrivoltaic projects is around 1-2 TW, according to the ministry.