New Delhi: The government will launch an agrivoltaics programme under the next phase of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan (PM-KUSUM), Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) Pralhad Joshi said on Wednesday. The programme is meant to let farmers produce solar electricity without giving up cultivation on the same land.
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Joshi made the announcement at the seventh Agrivoltaics World Conference 2026 – ‘Powering the Global South,’ held at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. “We will be launching one of the world’s most ambitious agrivoltaic programs under the next phase of PM Kusum. That is also we are planning,” he said.
The government is looking for ways to grow solar generation without hurting farm output, the minister said, particularly as demand for land rises across sectors. Linking the programme with existing agricultural schemes would open up further room for solar energy in farming, he added.
PM-KUSUM already forms a large part of India’s decentralised solar base. Decentralised solar capacity additions reached 16.3 GW in the previous year, Joshi said, and 7.6 GW of that came under the scheme. Rooftop solar made up the remaining 8.7 GW, largely through the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana, which had crossed 63 lakh beneficiaries.
Separately, a policy to promote agrivoltaics is in the works, Santosh Kumar Sarangi, Secretary in the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), told reporters later in the day. The draft would be released publicly so that stakeholders, including the states, could send in suggestions, he said. Changes to the policy would follow from that feedback.
Sarangi was asked what share agrivoltaics could take in India’s overall energy generation in the future. “We are targeting a capacity of 5 GW over the next few years to begin with. We will assess the response of the states,” he said.
A dedicated 10-GW agri-photovoltaic (agri-PV) component, for co-locating solar panels with crops, is also expected to be part of the proposed PM-KUSUM 2.0. According to an official, a central scheme is being planned as well to help states deploy agrivoltaics, with solar panels mounted on stilts above standing crops.
In an agrivoltaic system, solar panels sit above farmland, and crops grow underneath while the panels generate electricity. Joshi linked the case for the model to the size of Indian landholdings. Nearly 85 percent of the country’s farmers are small and marginal, he said, which makes it difficult to set land aside only for power generation. Installing 1 MW of solar capacity takes 4 acres, according to the minister, and agrivoltaics lets farming and power generation happen together on the same plot. Easing the pressure on land is also why the model has spread in many parts of the world, he noted.
Citing estimates, Joshi said around 47.5 million hectares is technically suitable for agrivoltaics. That works out to nearly 30 percent of India’s 160 million hectares of cropland, he said. Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh together hold nearly 50 percent of this estimated potential.
The minister also pointed to gains on the farm. “Field studies suggest that the suitable system can improve yields by 10 to 20 percent,” he said. The same field studies had indicated a cut of around 30 percent in water use under suitable systems, he added.
Higher installation costs, however, remain a major challenge to expanding agrivoltaics, Joshi said. “Agri PV plants can cost around 25 to 30 percent more than the conventional ground mounted solar,” he said. The panels have to be raised on elevated, tilted structures, he explained, and the additional infrastructure pushes up project costs.
That difference carries through to the cost of power. Electricity from agrivoltaic systems could cost around Rs 3.20-3.30 a unit, Joshi said, against roughly Rs 2.50-2.60 a unit from conventional ground-mounted solar. The gap would have to be closed for agrivoltaics to become commercially viable at a larger scale, he said. He called for scaling up deployment and indicated that costs could come down with scale, much as conventional solar tariffs have fallen over the years.
Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shivraj Singh Chouhan said agrivoltaic models must let farmers carry on with cultivation instead of replacing farming with solar generation. He wanted system designs to be practical. Panel height, the gap between support structures and room for farm machinery all had to be accounted for, he said.
With such designs, farmers would be able to plough their fields and switch crops and cropping patterns as they need, Chouhan said. Agrivoltaic policies, he stressed, must be built around the practical requirements of India’s small and marginal farmers.
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Agrivoltaic capacity installed worldwide has crossed 18.4 GW, Joshi said, and India can learn from that experience. He cited Italy’s 1.7-billion euro funding programme for farmers, solar developers and research institutions. Japan has opened every category of farmland to agrivoltaics and supports small-scale systems through preferential tariffs, he said. Germany, he added, ties its support to continued farming on the land and minimum crop-yield requirements.
Germany’s envoy also offered support for work on the ground. Jasper Wieck, German Ambassador to India and Bhutan, assured support for joint research on pilot agrivoltaic sites. “Here we will test how agriculture and solar power generation can be combined economically and sustainably on the same land,” he said.
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