Affordable Village Solar/SunWater

Sustainable Energy Solutions for Rural Poor Customers

Affordable Village Solar/SunWater Promotes…

Independence by empowering marginalized rural farmers to break the poverty cycle by achieving financial and energy sustainability

Productivity by enabling and advancing the production of high value, off-season crops made possible by irrigation technology and horticulture training

Clean Energy by reducing climate change by replacing carbon-emitting diesel and coal-dependent grid electricity with renewable, nonpolluting solar

Simple, Income-Generating, & Radically Affordable

Affordable Village Solar was founded to develop clean energy solutions that help raise rural poor farmers out of poverty through increased income opportunities. Its first product is a solar-powered irrigation system that displaces carbon emitting, expensive-to-operate diesel pumps, enabling farmers to grow high value, off-season horticulture crops.

AVS has partnered with world class engineers from the Ball Aerospace Design Volunteer Group in Colorado to design a system that has radically reduced the cost of solar irrigation pumping by 80%. This system was designed to compete with and replace the 26 million diesel water pumps currently used in India. The diesel pumps pollute heavily, and account for around 20% of all of the electricity used in India today.

From November 2014 – June 2015, AVS field tested solar pumping systems in Gujarat, India on agricultural and salt farms and gathered systematic data on actual usage. The implemented technology proved successful and farmers were able to drastically improve their income. Additionally, the technology designed and created by AVS adapted well to the varying conditions of rural India. The system was designed to irrigate one acre at a time, and has proven a payback of around 1 year.

Horticultural Crops

Around 70% of the world’s farms are 1 hectare or less. These farms are frequently overlooked and undervalued by large scale technological advancements. Often, these farmers and their families use the majority of their time and resources to provide food for themselves, and thus relinquish the opportunity to create profit in local markets

By utilizing radically affordable and sustainable irrigation systems, many small-scale rural farmers are able to harvest high-value horticultural crops during the dry season. This allows for increase of the family income by up to 80%, as off season crops are highly popular in rural markets.

Additional Applications: Salt Farming

Gujarat produces 70% of India’s salt and is a major source of income for thousands of rural poor families. Brine water is pumped from the ground and as the water evaporates, salt is harvested. The use of AVS’s solar system to pump brine water eliminates reliance on diesel fuel, which typically represents two-thirds of the production cost of the salt.