While the demand for electricity in agricultural sector is set rise drastically, solar agricultural feeders provides sustained solution to streamline and utilize electricity effectively. Explain (200 Words)
Refer - Financial Express
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 5 years
KEY POINTS
· India’s agricultural sector is responsible for the consumption of over 18% of overall national electricity usage.
· Electricity theft has emerged as another area of concern and has been on the rise due to non-metered electricity usage in the agricultural sector.
The challenges
1. Ensure farms receive uninterrupted electricity supply during daytime.
2. We need to prevent the rising electricity demand from the agricultural sector to bleed discoms further.
Sustained solution
· The first step towards the adoption of solar energy is solar agri-feeders installed by discoms to transmit energy to farms.
· A solar agri-feeder is a 1-10 MW community-scale solar power plant and is linked to a substation. These agri-feeders can provide largely uninterrupted and sustainable 8-10 hours of electricity during the day.
· It also prevents installation, maintenance and operation costs for farmers.
· Discoms can support farms when the power supply from the feeders is low due to sporadic sunlight, and can even use excess electricity produced by the feeders in case of low irrigation demand.
· Solar agri-feeders have unparalleled utility for the agricultural sector. A shining example is the solar substations of the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL), which are pegged to generate 200 MW of clean energy in a year, which can then be infused into the grid at attractive tariffs via long-term power purchase agreements.
· These enable reduction of agricultural subsidy and do not require capital subsidies of their own, from the government.
· These also offer remarkable scalability, as a large number of small solar power plants can be swiftly installed in the open or unused land of substations across the country.
· These feeders also eliminate the need for significant infrastructural costs, due to new large transmission lines, which is a challenge faced by large-scale wind and solar deployments.
· Discoms benefit immensely from this approach, as the mounting losses from agri-electricity subsidies are mitigated to an extent, which enables in reducing overall losses.
· The remarkable utility and viability of solar farm feeders is undeniable and has definite relevance in the government’s roster of energy sector interventions such as smart metering, renewables proliferation, energy-efficient pumps, and pan-India energy access.
SARI 6 years
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IAS Parliament 5 years
Try to include reduction of infrastructural costs, less installations o transmission lines, underline important key points only. Keep Writing.
