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Telangana Plans to Turn Solar Power Into Farmers’ Third Source of Income Photograph: (Archive)
The Telangana government has invited bids from startups to develop an innovative agrivoltaics project that seeks to treat solar power generation as a “third crop”, allowing farmers to simultaneously cultivate crops and generate electricity on the same piece of land using AI-enabled solar panels. The pilot project aims to demonstrate that farmers can potentially increase their incomes by up to 40% through dual land use and additional earnings from solar power generation.
The Agriculture Department, through Telangana State Technology Services Ltd (TGTS), has issued a request for proposals (RFP) to set up a 100-kW solar agrivoltaic farm at the Agricultural College in Aswaraopet, Bhadradri Kothagudem district. The project will be implemented under the Centre’s National e-Governance Plan in Agriculture (NeGPA) scheme and will serve as a demonstration model for farmers across the state.
Unlike conventional solar installations that prevent farming activities beneath the panels due to shading, the proposed project envisages specially designed transparent and elevated bifacial panels that allow sufficient sunlight penetration for crop cultivation while generating electricity. The state government said the technology would enable farmers to use 100% of their land both for agriculture and solar power production.
The project also proposes the use of artificial intelligence and analytics to monitor panel performance, detect underperforming modules, generate maintenance and cleaning alerts, and improve overall energy generation by 5-10%. The system will be supported by a mobile application and dashboard providing real-time data on power generation, consumption, power sold to the grid, crop health and farm performance.
As part of the initiative, the state plans to demonstrate the agrivoltaic model to at least 500 farmers through training and capacity-building programmes and facilitate access to government schemes such as PM-KUSUM for wider adoption of the technology. The installation will eventually become an asset of the Telangana government upon completion of the project.
The tender reflects Telangana’s broader push to position itself as a leader in agritech and solar agrivoltaics by integrating emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain into agriculture and creating new income streams for farmers.
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