Economic Feasibility of Semi Stationery Sprinkling Irrigation in Small Scale with Photovoltaic Energy

Abstract

The availability and costs of water, irrigation systems and energy are extremely important elements that limit the expansion of irrigation in many agricultural areas. The use of renewable sources of energy, and specifically photovoltaic, has been seen as a short-term solution to this last limitation. However, although apparently the existing technological alternatives can satisfy in this way the power demanded by any type and size of electric pump, there are many factors that decide the profitability of these alternatives in the case of irrigation. The present work is aimed to analyze one of these factors: the effect of the size of the irrigation system on the economic viability of this technology. Five modular systems of one, two, three, four and five hectares were designed for it, with their respective photovoltaic arrangements, which were evaluated from the economic point of view. The results indicate that although there is an increase in the initial investment and operating costs due to scale economy, the costs of the photovoltaic kilowatt installed and therefore of the annual water pumping, tend to decrease as the area increases, with values that ranged from 24.8 MCUP/kWp in the 1-hectare module, to 23.3 MCUP/kWp in the 5-hectare module. Corresponding to this, the smallest variants (1 ha) were unprofitable, showing profits after negative tax, with losses of 21.8 MCUP/year, as well as a B/C ratio of less than 1.