The government will soon launch a new central sector scheme to support solar power capacity creation using agriphotovoltaic (AgriPV) technology to bridge the 25-30 per cent higher cost of setting up such plants, Santosh Kumar Sarangi, secretary, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), said on Monday.
Briefing the media on the upcoming AgriVoltaics World Conference 2026 here, he said it may be possible to set up around 5 gigawatts (GW) of AgriPV solar capacity over the next three to four years, depending on the enthusiasm of state governments in notifying feed-in tariffs for such plants.
“In order to nudge all the states and to provide them with some kind of an initial incentive we are planning for a central sector scheme which will support AgriPV. We will probably make it part of one of our existing schemes, as and when they get revised,” Sarangi said.
He also added that MNRE is working with the Ministry of Finance to work out the details of the support scheme and how states could be incentivised to launch different AgriPV models. He said it is yet to be decided whether it will be launched as an upgrade under the existing PM-KUSUM scheme for farm-level solarisation or as a standalone initiative.
“In AgriPV, due to the tilted structure, the additional cost is of the civil infrastructure. This makes projects 25-30 percent more costly as compared to conventional ground-mounted solar. So, our objective will be to meet this cost gap under AgriPV. The broad idea is to nudge the states to take it to scale so that it becomes competitive over time and tariffs become commercially more viable,” he said.
Sarangi also said the ministry has carried out multiple successful pilots of AgriPV plants in different parts of the country along with the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) to ensure that the country’s food security and energy security needs can be effectively blended in the future.
“Pilots done in association with IARI have carried out an exhaustive mapping of crop metrics which are suitable in different agro-climatic zones. We have identified what kind of crops are more suitable in these zones. Largely, fruits and leafy vegetables are responding very positively to AgriPV,” he said.
He also said that parts of the country located within moderate solar irradiance zones, including Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, where energy can be generated without compromising food security requirements, will be more receptive and suitable for deploying AgriPV plants.
Under AgriPV technology, solar panels are set up on an elevated structure at a height of four metres, which allows routine agricultural operations to continue without interruption. India has AgriPV potential ranging between 1 terawatt and 2 terawatts, but these plants require 16 per cent more land.
Sarangi said the estimated cost of power from AgriPV plants could range between ₹3.20 per unit and ₹3.30 per unit, compared with the cost of electricity production in a decentralised KUSUM installation of between ₹2.80 per unit and ₹3.00 per unit.
He said the ministry plans to hold discussions on different policy options with discoms to understand how they can facilitate the procurement of power from farmers using AgriPV plants, and the ministry is already working on a policy document on the new technology.
