By Sarita Brara
The Panwar family’s land in Koti Nainbagh village in Tehri Garhwal district of Uttarakhand had been lying unused for almost one and a half decades. There were several factors that had led to the neglect of the agricultural land, including a shortage of farm labour in the difficult hilly terrain, lack of irrigation facilities and the destruction by monkeys and wild boars of whatever little was being grown. Today, a 200 kW solar power plant has been installed on the land that generates an average of 1,000 units of electricity on a daily basis. The plant, in the name of Sunita Panwar, was commissioned in the last week of July this year.
In a similar case, the Rawat family installed a 200 kW solar plant in Bhutsi village, also in Tehri Garhwal, on their rocky and uncultivable land.
In Kukreda village of Uttarkashi district, a farmer, Surendra Singh, also set up a 200 kW solar plant in the name of his wife, Nisha Singh. The plant began generating electricity in July this year and has an output of 28,000-32,000 units per month, according to Singh.
These installations, along with more than 80 other solar plants, have been commissioned since the Uttarakhand government notified the revised Mukhya Mantri Saur Swarozgar Yojana (MSSY) in 2023. The scheme supports the setting up of solar projects with capacities ranging from 20 kW to 200 kW. So far, 1,077 projects, with a combined capacity of 192.6 MWp, have been allotted and 86 projects with a total capacity of 16.05 MW have been commissioned. Tehri Garhwal district leads the allotments, with 371 projects allotted, of which 44 solar power plants have already been installed and 24 have started generating power. Second on the table with the maximum number of solar plants set up under the scheme is Uttarkashi district.
The MSSY was conceived during the Covid pandemic with the objective of creating livelihood opportunities for young people who had returned to their villages or were rendered jobless, and for supporting marginalised farmers. At that time, solar plants with a capacity of only up to 25 kW could be set up, and the scheme received a lukewarm response as the income from these plants, after covering the costs and other expenditures, was not enough to encourage villagers to invest in them.
To make the scheme more lucrative, it was revised in 2023, with the cap on plant capacity being raised from 25 kW to 200 kW. Since then, there has been an overwhelming response to the scheme, with more than 1,700 applications being received so far.
The subsidy for the installation of solar plants under the MSSY varies from 20 per cent to 55 per cent of the total cost, depending on the category and location of the villages. Women investors receive 5 per cent more subsidy than their male counterparts, which has led many investors, including the Panwar, Rawat and Singh families, to install solar plants in their wives’ names.
The cost of a 200 kW capacity solar plant is approximately Rs 10 million, and investors can take a loan of up to Rs 7.5 million for setting up the plant.
In fact, this lucrative scheme has attracted investors from urban areas to lease land in these villages and set up solar plants there. For instance, 19 investors have set up solar plants on the land leased out by Surendra Singh, and 17 of these plants have already been commissioned.
In another case, eight solar plants were set up in Genwali, a small village in Tehri Garhwal district, by investors from nearby towns, who took the land on lease. Each of these 200 kW capacity solar plants in Genwali began generating power from April this year. Since land holdings in hill areas are small and scattered, farmers sometimes pool their land for the installation of solar plants, as was the case in this village.
A ground-mounted solar plant with a capacity of 200 kW requires almost 45,000 square feet of land. Initially, each of these plants wes generating 900-1,000 units per day. Even during the rainy season, the average power generation has been around 600 units a day.
Utkarsh Aggarwal and other investors who leased land in Genwali for setting up the plants are paying nearly Rs 15,000 per month in rent, and they expect to achieve break even in four to five years after repaying bank loans of Rs 7 million-Rs 7.5 million. Uttarakhand Power Corporation Limited (UPCL) is buying power fed into the grid at the rate of Rs 4.64 per unit.
There are several examples of land being taken on lease by not only investors from nearby towns but also from other villages. The reason for this is that their own villages are either located far away from substations or have unsuitable topography for setting up solar plants.
One of the investors is Shubham, who has set up a 200 kW solar plant in Lingwana village, some distance away from his own village. In fact, the profits his parents earned from setting up solar plants under an earlier scheme of 2019 are no longer in vogue. Under this scheme, solar plants of capacities ranging from 100 kW to 5 MW could be installed. About 153 people had invested under that scheme, with a total installed solar power capacity of 78 MW. Neelam Rawat and Pratap Singh Rawat, who had installed solar plants of 400 kW and 200 kW capacity respectively in Lingwana under that scheme, are earning Rs 2.8 million and Rs 1.4 million annually, says their son Shubham.
Commenting on the MSSY, Manoj Kumar, chief project officer, Uttarakhand Renewable Energy Development Agency, remarks, “The scheme creates a win-win situation for all stakeholders. The state is getting additional power to meet the growing electricity demand at a rate that is significantly lower than what it has to pay for buying power from other states. The rate of power from other states can range from anywhere between Rs 8 and Rs 12 per unit. Meanwhile, individual entrepreneurs are able to earn a good income, farmers generate income by leasing out parts of their unused or barren land, and locals are also benefiting from employment opportunities.”
To cite the case of Surendra Singh, he is earning income not only through the sale of power from his own solar plant to UPCL but also through monthly payments by other investors for looking after their plants. He, in turn, has hired around a dozen people from the village to help with guarding the solar plants, maintaining cleanliness and even cultivating crops that can be grown in the shade of the solar panels. Singh states that he was earlier growing pulses on the land where his own solar plant has been installed, but he now plans to shift to cultivating herbal plants that can grow in the shade of the solar panels. Several other farmers are also turning to the cultivation of herbal crops, such as turmeric and ginger, under the solar plants they have set up.
Solar power developers are of the view that there is plenty of barren and rocky land in Uttarakhand. Additionally, agricultural land in many hilly areas has become uncultivable due to migration or the fear of crop destruction by wild animals. This land can be put to use by making it suitable for setting up solar plants.
The Uttarakhand government has set a target of 250 MW of solar power capacity under the MSSY. It is also aiming for 2,500 MW of installed solar power capacity by December 2027, as outlined in the new policy launched in 2023. Such distributed solar plants, set up on a large scale, can significantly help in achieving the state’s target.