India has embarked on an ambitious plan to replace its 26 million groundwater irrigation pumps with solar-powered versions.

The massive project is in response to ever-increasing fuel costs and a lack of reliability in its supply.

Reports say India could save about $6.6 billion per year in power and diesel subsidies alone.

For the nation’s millions of impoverished farmers, the upgrades will mean consistent access to water supplies - something many farms have not experienced in decades.

“The potential is huge,” Tarun Kapoor, joint secretary at India’s Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, said in a recent interview.

“Irrigation pumps may be the single largest application for solar in the country.”

Financial media outlets report the Indian government will look to secure about $1.7 billion in outside funds to replace the country’s 200,000 most easily-upgraded pumps.

Farmers will have to use water-saving drip irrigators in exchange for subsidies to buy solar pumps, this is intended to prevent them from using excessive amounts of water after the costs are slashed.

The added reliability of solar will allow many farmers to expand their crops, providing a significant potential boost to productivity.

The plan could hardly be better timed, as fuel prices continue to escalate while solar panel costs diminish.

“Because of the drop in photovoltaic prices, globally we’re selling more solar pumps without subsidies than with,” says Stephan Grinzinger, head of sales for Lorentz Vertriebs, a German maker of solar water pumps.

Water scarcity and falling groundwater tables have been highlighted as the key reasons India’s production of wheat, corn and rice has stalled in recent years, according to analysis published by the journal Nature Communications.

“Solar pumping may have far-reaching impacts on agriculture in India, where monsoon rains dictate sowing cycles of crops such as rice, soybeans and peanuts,” said Avinash Kishore, an associate research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in New Delhi.

Other advantages include the end of a trend that sees farmers pre-selling their crops at a reduced price, just to gather funds to fuel their pumps in the first place. Being able to afford to irrigate without first selling the crop they produce means farmers will be able to negotiate better prices.

Early estimates suggest eight million Indian diesel pumps could be swapped right now without major economic fallout.

Official figures show 700,000 diesel pumps are bought every year in India, a figure could be heavily displaced by solar investment.