The Council on Energy, Environment and Water has released an issue brief titled, “Feasibility Assessment of Agriculture Solar Micro Grids: A Case Study of TP-DDL Discom in North Delhi”. The brief discusses the economic analysis of a medium-sized solar plant (1 MW) connected to agriculture feeders under different business models: farmer-owned, discom-owned and third-party-owned. Focussing on a case study on solarising the agriculture load in Tata Power Delhi Distribution Limited’s license area in North Delhi the study compares the levelised cost of electricity and farmer(s) income under the three business models. The benefits to dicoms by shifting agriculture supply from night time to solar generation hours has also been assessed in the issue brief. Overall, the study recommends discom-owned/third-party-owned model as a win-win proposal for the discom and farmers in a bid to scale up solarisation of the agriculture sector.
The issue brief can be downloaded here