Solar Powered Water Pumps Evaluation in India

MIT D-Lab, in partnership with USAID and the Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation (CITE) at MIT, conducted an evaluation of solar-powered water pump systems in India. In countries like India where rainfall patterns vary between seasons, access to irrigation can significantly improve farmers' productivity and income. In India, solar pumping has been identified as a desirable technological solution. This evaluation aims to create a technical comparative evaluation of the pumps used in conjunction with solar panels, understand the socio-economic drivers and grassroots level insights association with solar pump use, analyze the interactions between water, energy and food through system dynamics modeling, and analyze the business models used by farmers to access and use solar pumps.