Working to develop framework for solarising agri-pumps: Goyal

The government is working on developing a framework for solarising agriculture pumps in order to reduce power consumption by farmers, Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal today said.
It has already embarked on a plan to provide energy efficient agriculture pumps to farmers and has launched National Energy Efficient Agriculture Pumps Programme in this regard.
Under the programme, farmers can replace their inefficient pumps free of cost with the new BEE star-rated energy efficient agricultural pump-sets.
"Along with energy efficient pumps, we are now mulling the possibility of introducing solar pumps. We are drawing a framework for the same, but this will be in the second phase of the program. Our priority now is energy efficient pumps and we will simultaneously work on solarising pumps," he said at an IACC event here.

Under the National Energy Efficient Agriculture Pumps Programme, EESL will distribute 2,00,000 BEE star-rated pump-sets to the farmers, which will lead to 30 per cent of energy savings by 2019.
This translates into an annual savings of approximately Rs 20,000 crore on agricultural subsidies or a saving of 50 billion units of energy every year.