80% of the world’s cropland depends solely on rainfall for water. This land produces approximately 50% of global crop yields. The remaining 50% is produced on irrigated lands. Providing land with irrigation increases food production by between 40 and 300% relative to rainfed agriculture. For this reason, the global demand for irrigation technology is growing. However, in many parts of the world, the access to irrigation is constrained by the availability of energy for pumping water rather than the availability of water itself.

The price of solar energy fell by about 90% in the last decade. As a result, for new irrigation projects in developing countries, solar energy has recently become not only the cleanest but also the lowest cost source of energy for pumping water. The low cost of solar energy and the large demand for irrigation are the main factors driving rapid growth in the global solar pump market.

For solar engineering companies, who sell solar modules and other components, designing irrigation systems is a challenge. They need to estimate the water demand for agriculture, perform hydraulic calculations and make a technical selection from a wide variety of pumps: tasks which are all out of the scope of their expertise. Similarly, traditional irrigation system designers are also unfamiliar with irradiance data, solar module selection and solar array sizing. Designing efficient solar irrigation systems requires the combination of agricultural sciences, irrigation and hydraulics and solar engineering.

During his PhD in solar energy at TU Delft, the Netherlands, EUREC alumnus Rishabh Ghotge set up a company, Heliostrome, to address this challenge. Heliostrome aims to develop the world’s first comprehensive software for the design of solar irrigation systems. The software will provide engineers with the data and the algorithms needed to design affordable and water-efficient irrigation systems which increase crop growth and provide resilience from drought at low carbon costs.

Heliostrome was selected as one of the top Dutch startups in Climate LaunchPad 2021, the world’s largest green business ideas competition and was recently in the finals of the Philips Innovation Awards, the largest student entrepreneurship award in the Netherlands.  They are currently working with their first customers and have secured an initial grant to test the feasibility of the concept. Pending future funding, a basic working version of the software will be tested with 40 farmers in Mozambique in collaboration with governmental, NGO and commercial partners.

To find out more, set up a collaboration or just say hello, please get in touch at www.heliostrome.com.

Text by Rishabh Ghotge (EMRE 2015-16).