Micro-Agrivoltaics: Hiding in plain sight

There is growing interest in expanding and mainstreaming agrivoltaics in India. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) recently helped organize 100 farmer-awareness workshops around the country’s flagship PM-KUSUM scheme, where the potential for agrivoltaics was among the key themes of discussion. The Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) has now launched a Centre of Excellence for research into agrivoltaics and related themes. Meanwhile, the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) convened a brainstorming session and published a policy paper,  Agrivoltaics for Sustainable Crop and Energy Production, urging the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare (MoAFW) and MNRE to craft a joint National Agrivoltaics Policy.

Innovative research and on-ground pilots are multiplying, showcasing promising business models that can be scaled. At the same time, private sector and renewable energy developers are also signaling strong interest in expanding agrivoltaics deployment.

Taken together, these developments underscore the significant enthusiasm surrounding agrivoltaics as a pathway to help scale solar deployment while supporting India’s farmers and agriculture sector. However, one dimension remains largely overlooked by key stakeholders and policymakers: “micro-agrivoltaics”.

The biggest appeal of agrivoltaics is dual land use—for solar energy generation and agriculture. In fact, some have argued that under certain conditions, and for certain crops, agrivoltaics can improve agricultural incomes. Small and marginal farmers, used to squeezing livelihoods from stamp-sized land parcels through intensive irrigation and multiple cropping, intuitively grasp this benefit. Many have installed small solar plants to run irrigation pumps and continued farming beneath the panels. These ‘live agrivoltaics pilots’ have largely remained unstudied. In this article, we highlight key findings from a small telephonic survey undertaken by ITP in north Bihar.

Over the past decade, solar irrigation has grown substantially—from less than 5,000 solar pumps in 2010-11 to more than 800,000 by 2024-25. Most of them have deployed (relatively) small capacity solar panels on farmers’ fields—primarily with the objective of powering irrigation. While the dominant practice is to fence off the land parcels where solar panels are deployed, some farmers have chosen to deviate from the norm. During our field visits in north Bihar, we found several farmers extending their cultivation underneath solar panels. Intrigued by this practice, we decided to initiate a quick assessment.

In 2024, ITP commissioned a phone survey of 162 farmers who were irrigating their crops using solar pumps. Of the farmers interviewed, 70 reported cultivating some crops underneath solar panels. The practice of cropping under solar panels was driven by small land holdings and extreme land fragmentation. The crops ranged across tomatoes, brinjal, chilli, ginger, carrot, cucumber, garlic, peas, lady finger, turmeric, cauliflower, and other leafy vegetables. While some reported doing this for just over a year, several had been practicing this for 3 years. One interviewed farmer shared 8 years of experience cultivating crops under solar panels. Findings show:

• Only 10% of the farmers practicing ‘micro-agrivoltaics’ believed that cultivating crops underneath solar panels would hinder crop growth.
• Except in the case of cherry tomatoes, farmers did not report any change in the density of crop cultivation underneath solar panels vis-à-vis open field cultivation.
• About a third of the interviewed farmers thought that crops grown underneath solar panels require less irrigation and that the shading improved soil moisture retention.
• The best yield improvements were reported for chilli, ginger, turmeric, tomatoes, brinjal, and leafy vegetables.
• 25% of the micro-agrivoltaics farmers reported no change in crop yield under solar panels; 35% reported marginally higher yields; while 40% reported significantly higher yields under solar panels (>20% higher).

India’s roughly 25 million minor irrigation structures represent a large irrigation economy dominated by pumps in the hands of millions of small farmers. Collectively, solarizing the minor irrigation economy offers a potential for deploying about 200 GWp of solar—and if the Bihar survey is any indication, these could support hundreds of MWp of micro-agrivoltaics.

Although our sample was small, the survey was semi-structured, and sampling was based exclusively on convenience, the results point to the need for a more systematic investigation of the impact and potential of micro-agrivoltaics. ITP intends to build on this work in 2025 through a more systematic study of this promising 'grassroot innovation’ that has been hiding in plain sight.