21/12/2018 - Agriculture | Mainstorming

IAS Parliament 6 years

KEY POINTS

Electricity demand for agriculture is expected to double in the next 10 years and as the average cost of supply keeps increasing, the problem of agriculture subsidies will become worse.

Current Scenario

· Agricultural sector, in many States has been receiving electricity at either low tariffs or for free. Much of this supply is un-metered.

· Due to the lower tariff and poor revenue collection, agricultural sales are often seen as a major reason for the financial losses of distribution companies (discoms).

· Part of this loss is then recovered through higher tariffs for other consumers like industry and commercial (called cross-subsidy), and the remaining through direct subsidy from the State governments.

· As agricultural sector is seen as loss-making, often gets poor quality supply leading to problems such as frequent pump burn-outs and power failures.

Reliable supply of electricity via solar power feeders

· An innovative programme taking advantage of these developments has started in Maharashtra under the aegis of the ‘Chief Minister’s solar agriculture feeder programme’.

· The plant can be set up in few months and there is no change at the farmer’s end. Pumps need not be changed and farmers do not have to take responsibility of installation and operation.

· The major advantages of this approach are that apart from ensuring day-time reliable power for the farmers, it requires no capital subsidy from the government, it is cost-effective, thereby enabling reduction in subsidy.

· Additionally, no new large transmission lines are needed, which has become a bottleneck for various large scale wind and solar power tenders.

· This approach can also provide distributed jobs to local youth in construction, operation and maintenance of the plant.

· Future programmes could link deployment of such solar feeders to: reduce unauthorised use/connections, improve metering and tariff recovery, energy efficient pumps, water saving approaches, etc.

Criticisms of solar power feeders

· Manufacturing of solar panels in India is costly due to high production cost and a case is pending in WTO regarding solar panel dispute.

· Availability of arable lands; mostly solar panels are installed in grasslands which are considered as wastelands as per government notification, lives critically endangered great Indian Bustard heavily affected.

· Lack of storage capacity of electricity in India causes huge power loss.

Therefore, Government of India needs to focus reduction in cost of manufacturing of solar panels and installation should not encroach grasslands.