A field report by Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha on 3 October says 32 solar-powered irrigation pumps were installed in Rajshahi division over the previous two years. The work is part of the Department of Agricultural Extension’s Agricultural Development Project of Rajshahi Division through Expansion of Modern Technology, intended to address irrigation difficulties in the Barendra region. In Mohanpur, the report describes farmers using solar pumps to grow early vegetables alongside Aus and Boro paddy, as well as brinjal, tomato, cauliflower, cabbage and chilli. One farmer said a pump was serving around 20 farmers across about 30–35 bighas. That is a local account of one installation, not an average across all systems. The report also says some farmers now cultivate paddy three times in a year. This is a field-reported experience, not a regional production statistic or a measured change across participating farms.

Project sources said 24 of the 32 installations were fixed systems and eight were portable units that could be moved between fields. The fixed pumps were each described as two horsepower. Separately, the project had installed 10 precision solar systems for targeted irrigation in orchards. The report does not clarify whether those 10 are a separate category or overlap with the 32 fixed and portable pumps, so the counts should not be added to claim 42 installations. Project Director S M Hasanuzzaman put each pump’s installation cost at around Tk500,000 based on tender figures. He said a two-horsepower pump could irrigate about 20–25 bighas per day while operating from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Bigha is a regional land measure; the story provides no conversion to hectares or acres, so no conversion is inferred. The stated daily command area is a project official’s capacity estimate, not a measured average of land actually irrigated each day.

Officials said the initiative was introduced as falling groundwater levels reduced the effectiveness of deep tube wells. The project director gave an example in which the command area of a deep tube well had declined from about 150 bighas to about 80 bighas. This is a single cited example in the report, not a measured regional average or a groundwater time series. He also said solar irrigation had brought farmers’ irrigation costs close to zero and increased cropping intensity by around 50%. The report does not provide the baseline period, farm sample, calculation method or operating-cost breakdown behind those impact claims. They should therefore remain attributed assessments by a project official rather than independently measured agricultural outcomes. The source says there are plans to add solar panels to existing diesel- and electricity-powered irrigation pumps, but it gives no implementation date or count for that future work.

Farmers’ accounts suggest that the timing and availability of water can affect crop choices: participants described previously moving water from distant ponds with diesel pumps and facing high irrigation costs, while solar users reported planting early vegetables alongside different paddy seasons. The report also says one pump was jointly managed by a committee of participating farmers, indicating that access rules and maintenance matter alongside the source of energy. It contains no measured comparison of diesel consumption, maintenance expenses, water withdrawal, crop yields, sales income or how water was divided among households. An agriculture extension officer said the initiative would be more meaningful if surplus electricity could be supplied to the national grid outside the irrigation season; the report does not say that such a connection exists. Future reporting on system uptime, actual irrigated area, groundwater levels and operating costs would help assess the contribution of solar power to irrigation access and farm output.