An approach for the economical evaluation of solar irrigation in Bangladesh

This paper represents a comparative picture of irrigation cost of different Bangladeshi crops for diesel, grid electricity and solar power based irrigation systems. The study has been conducted on 27 types of crops. All the data were collected about volume of water for those crops. Then three different types of pump (solar, diesel, electric) have been chosen with same power rating i.e. 5hp. Specific area covered for different crops are calculated furthermore from the attained water volumes. Then finally it has been calculated the 10 years cost in taka. The study found for the entire crops grid powered irrigation cost is minimum than solar powered irrigation cost because the later one is associated with huge primary investment.[12] The study also discovered irrigation with solar power for most of the crops such as onion, carrot, chill, tomato, maize, garlic, gourd, ginger, turmeric, pumpkin, cabbage, cauliflower, lady finger, banana, papaya and groundnut are not beneficial at all rather it costs very high among all the three types of irrigation system.[5] It is also evident that irrigation with solar power of certain crops like potato, cotton, soybean, sunflower, strawberry, lentil, mustard are very much lucrative compared to diesel powered irrigation.