India tests farmer-owned agrivoltaics with a 600 kW Rajasthan solar farm
A Rajasthan farmer operates a 600 kW agrivoltaic project on nearly 3 acres, growing maize beneath elevated solar panels. The setup links to the local grid for daytime irrigation power and aims to diversify income for smallholders.
Key takeaways
- A 3-acre site in Rajasthan operates a 600 kW agrivoltaics installation that crops maize under elevated solar panels.
- The system feeds daytime irrigation power to around 250 farms and is described as Rajasthan’s first farmer-owned APV project.
- Income for the farmer rose from about ₹40,000 annually to roughly ₹3 lakh with the APV setup, while the project adds significant upfront costs.
What Happened
The project is sited on Kojadmal Jat’s land in Kundanpura village, Bassi block, about an hour east of Jaipur, Rajasthan. The farm spans nearly 3 acres and hosts a 600 kW plant. Maize is cultivated beneath elevated solar panels, creating a mixed-use site where agriculture continues alongside energy generation. The system is described as Rajasthan’s first farmer-owned agrivoltaics (APV) installation. The generated power feeds into the local grid to supply daytime irrigation power for around 250 farms. The farmer, 60-year-old Kojadmal Jat, began adopting the APV model in 2023 after weighing the trade-off between farming and solar energy on productive land.
Researchers from the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) collaborated with Jat to explore this model, with Laxmi Sharma explaining the shift from a single-income farming approach to a diversified income stream. The APV concept seeks to balance crop cultivation with energy generation by using partial shading to potentially reduce heat stress and evaporation, especially beneficial in dry and arid regions.
Why It Matters
The project highlights a potential way to diversify smallholder farm income while adding solar capacity. By enabling crops to grow under and around elevated panels, the approach could mitigate the need to choose strictly between food production and electricity generation on the same land. The initiative also illustrates how farmer ownership of APV projects might change the economics of solar adoption in agricultural areas, although upfront costs remain a barrier for many smallholders.
Background
APV, also known as agrivoltaics or agrivoltaic farming, is a practice where land is used for both agriculture and solar power generation. In this pilot, the design aims to create a microclimate beneath the panels that can support crop production and reduce heat stress and evaporation. The broader context includes ongoing experimentation with agrivoltaics across India, where researchers began studying farmer-owned APV models in mid-2024, and earlier pilots were mostly led by academic institutions or private developers, with fewer instances of farmer ownership.
Key Facts
- Location: Kojadmal Jat’s land, Kundanpura village, Bassi block, near Jaipur, Rajasthan
- Size: nearly 3 acres
- Capacity: 600 kW plant
- Production use: electricity to the local grid for daytime irrigation powering around 250 farms
- Ownership: described as Rajasthan’s first farmer-owned APV installation
- Agriculture: maize cultivated beneath elevated solar panels
- Economic note: APV can raise farm returns by about ₹3–4 lakh per acre annually, with elevated structures adding roughly ₹35 lakh over a conventional installation
- Baseline income: Jat’s farming income before APV was about ₹40,000 per year; with APV, approximately ₹3 lakh per year
- Timeline: farmer shifted to APV in 2023; mid-2024 researchers in New Delhi started viability studies
- Context: at the start of the study period, India had around two dozen agrivoltaics pilots, most not farmer-owned
- Related person: Laxmi Sharma, ICRIER research associate
- Parallel case: Anand Jain in Madhya Pradesh studied agrivoltaics in Europe before applying local observations
- National context: India ranked 102nd out of 123 countries on the 2025 Global Hunger Index
What Happens Next
The article notes ongoing exploration of the viability of farmer-owned APV models, with researchers collecting data on panel height, spacing, and microclimate effects from comparative studies in India and Europe. No specific future schedule for expansion or additional farms is provided in the material.
Sources reviewed
Project Chintan independently synthesized and analyzed information cross-checked across the sources listed above.
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