PM KUSUM

PM KUSUM

Subject: Welfare schemes

Context: The Centre modified the scheme and will now provide 30 per cent of the cost of building a small solar plant (70% cost borne by state DISCOMS) to supply electricity to the agricultural feeder, which essentially supplies electricity to all the pumps in a village.

Concept:

Three components of PM-KUSUM

1. 10,000 megawatts (MW) of decentralised ground mounted grid-connected renewable power plants (Component-A);
2. Installation of 17.50 lakh standalone solar powered agriculture pumps (Component-B); and
3. solarisation of 10 lakh grid-connected solar powered agriculture pumps (Component-C).

About modification in scheme:

• The modification aims at focus on solarizing agricultural feeders instead of pumps, which was focus so far and changes component 3.
• Currently, under the scheme farmers were being provided 30 per cent subsidy from the Centre and another 30 per cent from their State government (40% by farmers) to replace their existing grid connected agricultural pumps with grid connected solar pumps.
• Farmers were not incentivized under it as agriculture supplied to agriculture gets subsidy already.
• In current change it is expected that the DISCOMS will see fall in procurement cost from current Rs 6 per unit to Rs 2 per unit for solar power and hence retrieve the investment in 4-5 years.
• Or for remaining 70% cost the state can avail loans from NABARD or they can even launch tenders for these proposed solar plants and sign PPAs with winning developers