Exploring renewable energy for agriculture, MSMEs

January 23, 2015 12:00 am | Updated 05:49 am IST - VELLORE:

When it comes to power shortage, farmers are among the worst-hit. Yet, the agricultural sector has inched very little towards the use of renewable energy in Vellore, mainly due to lack of models and high initial investment, according to experts.

As per a survey, at least 37 per cent electricity connection goes for farming in Vellore taluk, but farmers are among the first to be affected when there is power cut for six to eight hours a day as water supply gets hit, R. Natarajan, director, Carbon Dioxide Research and Green Technology Centre, VIT University said.

“For agriculture, electricity is crucial mainly for running pumps to supply water for irrigation purposes. When power crisis looms large, turning to renewable energy such as solar and biomass will help,” he said.

In the absence of any models to take renewable energy to agriculture, micro and small industries, experts have come together to evolve a mechanism to explore the opportunities. A project — Renewable Energy Harvesting and Effective Utilisation in Agriculture and Engineering Industry (Micro and Small Enterprises) 2015 — will look at coming up with models and studying scope and feasibility in this area in Vellore, R. Velmurugan, project coordinator said.

Seminar

A one-day seminar was organised on Thursday to kick-start a road map for the project. S. Nagarajan, general manager, Kramski Stamping and Moulding Pvt Ltd suggested creating an agriculture-engineering (micro and small enterprises) cluster for renewable energy. “Through this cluster approach, a common facility could be set up, skill development activities can be taken up and value added products of agricultural produce such as jaggery and rice can be taken up,” he said.

Vellore district and Tamil Nadu face power shortage and renewable energy is a boon, he added.

G.V. Selvam, vice president of VIT University, said agriculture faced problems owing to labour and water shortage. “We have around 300 days of sun here but utilisation of solar energy is less when compared to foreign countries. One reason for less utilisation is that the initial investment is more,” he pointed out.

He urged students and institutions to work on developing low-cost models so that people could adopt renewable energy. Professor Natarajan said farmers could generate power using solar energy and biomass, store the power and use whenever required in the fields.

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