Techno-economic evaluation of renewable energy systems for irrigation water pumping in India

An attempt to develop a simple framework for techno-economics evaluation of renewable energy (RE) systems for irrigation water pumping has been made. The unit cost of water delivered and unit cost of useful energy delivered by the RE systems have been estimated. The monetary benefits that accrued to the end-user have been quantified in terms of the amount of diesel or electricity saved. Economic figures of merit for an investments made in the RE systems have been estimated along with the estimation of the break-even prices of fuels likely to be substituted by RE systems. Results of some exemplifying calculations are briefly presented.