Solar energy-based equipment
Solar
Photovoltaics (Solar PV) can be used in agriculture in a number of ways
such as, pumping systems for lifting water from pond, rivers and groundwater, operating
the pressurized irrigation system, sprayer, duster, mechanical weeder. Solar
heater can be used to dry crops, livestock buildings, and poly-houses used for
vegetable farming. Some of the post
harvest operations such as threshing and winnowing can be done by using solar
PV. Being renewable source of energy, use of solar energy in agriculture
reduces pollutions/ GHGs and cost-effective in long run. Odisha receives an average incident solar radiation
between 5.4 to 5.6 kWh/ m/day-with 300 clear sunny
days every year having 6.65 sunshine hours/day. This can be
effectively be used in some of the above mentioned operations.