Kadaneri, Sivagangai district
The tank that came back to life
A 400-year-old village tank, silted to a puddle, now irrigates 8 acres again, and the village's wells haven't run dry since.
Read the storySuccess story · Green Energy
The village that switched off diesel
9 smallholder farms replaced diesel pumpsets with a shared solar irrigation system, cutting costs by 70% and powering the new produce cold room.
70%drop in irrigation cost
Kombai, Theni district · 2024-2025 · FPO-owned and operated
Kombai's farms sit on good soil with decent groundwater, but every irrigation cycle ran on diesel. Fuel costs were eating 30-40% of farm income, and pump breakdowns at critical moments were routinely costing whole crops.
“Diesel decided what we grew, only crops that could pay for the pump. Now water costs almost nothing, and we plan the farm around the market, not the fuel.”
Working with the farmer producer group, we designed a shared solar pumping system: two high-capacity solar pumps feeding a gravity distribution network, with metered outlets for each of the 9 member farms. The FPO owns the system; a per-use fee funds maintenance and a replacement corpus.
Surplus generation now runs a 2-tonne cold room at the collection centre, letting farmers hold produce for better prices instead of distress-selling on harvest day. The diesel pumpsets were sold for scrap, the village's own decision, and its favourite part of the story.
Site-level monitoring data for this project is available on our Impact page
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