National Energy Efficient Agriculture Pumps Programme

With an estimated 21 million agricultural pump sets connected to the power grid in India, irrigation becomes a substantial cost in agriculture. The sector constitutes around 18.5% of India’s total energy consumption. This power consumption is expected to rise by an estimated 54% between 2015 and 2022 which must be matched by energy efficiency. Locally made pump sets used for irrigation are both inefficient and unreliable, causing massive water waste and higher energy consumption.

In order to make country more energy efficient, the National Energy Efficient Agriculture Pumps Programme has been launched by the Ministry of Power. The programme will help farmers in replacing energy guzzlers age-old agricultural pumps across the country with the new-age energy efficient agricultural pumps, with a 5-Star Rating. These pumps will come enabled with smart control panel and a SIM card, giving farmers the flexibility to switch-on and switch-off these pumps from their mobile phones and from the comfort of their homes.

Features of the programme

• Smart BEE star rated Energy Efficient Agricultural Pump sets are to be distributed to farmers.
• Farmers can replace their inefficient agricultural pump sets free of cost.
• Pumps to come with Smart Control Panes that has a SIM card and a Smart Meter.
• Smart Control Panel will enable a farmer to switch on or switch off these pumps through his mobile and sitting at the comfort of his home.
• Smart meters to ensure the farmers to monitor consumption on real time basis.
• Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) to distribute 200,000 BEE star rated pump-sets to the farmers under this programme, which will lead to 30% of energy savings by 2019. This translates into an annual savings of approx Rs20,000 crore on agricultural subsidies or a saving of 50 billon units of energy per year.

Implementation agency

The scheme is being implemented by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL), a JV of PSUs under Ministry of Power under its Agriculture Demand Side Management (AgDSM) Programme.

Source : EESL