Case study: The power of energy for better farming

The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet is supporting the Government of Rajasthan, northwestern India, to provide solar power to farmers and their communities, delivering reliable energy and increasing productivity. A combination of digital innovation and on-the-ground outreach to farmers successfully accelerated the scaling of the government’s existing PM-KUSUM agri-solarization initiative, installing more than 530,000 new solar-powered irrigation pumps and reaching more than a million farmers with clean energy.

Rajasthan is India’s largest state by area, but amongst the smallest by population: it is home to 86 million mostly rural people, more than one in 10 of whom are farmers working small plots. In a region prone to severe water shortages, insecure electricity supply often leads farmers to leave irrigators running overnight, risking over-watering, or to rely on expensive diesel-powered pumps. At the same time, fragmented land ownership makes it difficult for solar developers to achieve the size and scale necessary for investment.

Global Energy Alliance staff embarked on an extensive education outreach, visiting farmers to explain the program and facilitating meetings with those who were already participating. With many farmers working parcels of land smaller than five acres it was critical to help them understand how they could participate, and equip them to do so.

A digital project management tool provided the crucial breakthrough. Creating a digital portal that allowed farmers to register their land via an app at a predetermined lease rate allowed utilities to verify land titles and bundle contiguous plots into larger parcels approved for development. Solar developers were then able to find suitable aggregated sites on the app and bid on them.

This holistic approach – combining farmer education, land aggregation support, utility capacity building and digital tools – unlocked Rajasthan agri-solarization program at scale, leading to:

• 670,000 new solar connections
• 530,000 solar irrigation pumps installed
• 1 million farmers reached
• $1.2 billion financing unlocked

Global Energy Alliance, in partnership with the utility Jaipur Vidyut Vitran Nigam Limited (JVVNL), developed a complementary digital tool designed to help utilities track their project pipeline, monitoring contracts, assess progress, address setbacks and improve service delivery. Each project was tracked from tender to commissioning.

Since Global Energy Alliance began working with its partners on PM-KUSUM in 2023, Rajasthan has added 2.67GW of solar capacity from more than 1,200 solar plants. At the end of 2025, an additional 2,500 solar plants were in the pipeline. To date, more than 530,000 solar-powered irrigation pumps have been installed, supporting more than a million farmers.

External analysis offers a striking snapshot of the impact: between September 2023 and February 2025, an additional 13,000 solar pump installations were enabled in Rajasthan thanks to land aggregation and the new tools.

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‘Powering hope in Haiti’ is part of a series of seven Global Energy Alliance case studies highlighting impact across the global portfolio. Together, they showcase a consistent model: pairing infrastructure with opportunity, aligning public and private actors and creating pathways to scale that extend beyond individual projects.

From Africa to Asia and Latin America, the series illustrates how Global Energy Alliance is translating its two pillars — Grids of the Future and Powering Opportunity — into tangible results for communities, demonstrating how clean energy can drive inclusive growth, unlock investment and accelerate progress toward universal clean energy access.