Challenges & solution in determination of agriculture consumption

The agricultural sector consumes about 23 percent of India\´s electricity and 90 percent of its ground water. Although a number of initiatives have demonstrated that more efficient irrigation pump sets could save 30 to 70 percent of the sector\´s electricity use, stakeholders have been unwilling to bear the costs and risks of replacing the country\´s inefficient pump sets. To address this problem, the United States Agency for International Development India(USAID) has launched a pilot project to replace about 600 irrigation pump sets in India\´s Karnataka State under "Water Energy Nexus" (WENEXA) project. This pilot demonstrated the first market-driven public-private partnership between Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM) and an Energy Service Company (ESCo) for agricultural demand-side management. If implemented nationwide, India could reduce its electricity supply/ demand gap from 11 to 3 percent and its annual agricultural tariff subsidy by $2400 million a year, among other socio-economic benefits. To measure the saved energy, "Electrical Research and Development Association" Vadodara (ERDA) has been involved as technical and third party independent organization for the field parameters measurement and establishment of the baseline consumption of existing Irrigation Pump sets (IP set). The agriculture electricity tariff in India is highly subsidized and is either zero, flat rate or consumption based. About 95% of the IP sets fall under the category of flat rate tariff. The flat rate is a highly subsidized tariff and lead to use of higher capacity pumps with lower contract load with utility and use of agriculture supply for purpose other than agriculture such as domestic, commercial etc. Due to demand supply shortage, three phase supply is provided to farmers for about eight hours for agriculture purpose and single phase supply for about twelve hours for purposes other than agriculture. Farmers run IP sets during single phase supply availability also by - - using capacitors. All these ground realities posed challenge for establishment of creditable base line of IP set consumption only. The paper describes a methodology which addresses these challenges. The methodology has been accepted by the stakeholders with varied and opposite interests. It is hoped that this methodology would serve as a base document for other agriculture demand side management projects expected to be implemented on large scale in South Asia in coming years.