Telangana mulls replacing water pumps with solar pumps.

The Telangana Government has constituted a committee of five senior officials to study the feasibility of replacing all the water pump sets in the farm sector with solar pump sets.

This move follows a directive by State Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao after a review of the progress of solar pump project. He wanted a detailed analysis of the savings and the estimation of the overall cost before a massive project to change the pumps sets is considered.

Rajendra V Mahajan, Associate Vice President of Kiriloskar Brothers and Ajay Shirodkar, General Manager,met with the Chief Minister proposing to install solar pump sets and also evincing interest to maintain them for 10 years.

As per the plan, it is proposed to take up a pilot project in the State to establish solar pump sets and follow this up with one lakh pump sets in phase one and then take it up on a bigger scale.

The State has more than 20 lakh pump sets which are used in the agriculture sector. They consume about 13 million units of energy per day if used for about seven hours in a day and require about Rs. 15 crore per day. Given the huge financial implications of supplying power to the pump sets, the State wanted to evaluate how the solar pump sets would work out in the long run.

The State has earmarked Rs. 240 crore for solar pump sets in the Budget for a pilot project.


HBL