A renewables land brief is not a real-estate brief. Road frontage barely matters. What matters is the distance and voltage of the nearest evacuation point, whether the block is contiguous enough to lay an array across, whether the terrain and shading work, and whether thirty khatedar families will sign the same document on the same terms.
We source and help structure land for solar, battery storage and hybrid projects in the Phulera–Sambhar–Naraina–Rupangarh belt and the wider Jaipur–Ajmer corridor — usually on long lease, occasionally on purchase, always with the ceiling and title questions raised before the first agreement rather than after the thirtieth. We are not an EPC, not a consultant to DISCOMs, and not a government body.
How much land does your capacity need?
MW to land — indicative quantum estimator
Land intensity is the first number a renewables land brief needs. Published planning ranges for utility-scale solar sit at roughly 3.5 to 5 acres per MW depending on technology, tilt, row spacing and terrain; wind is far less land-hungry per MW but needs specific micro-siting. Pick the intensity your own layout uses.
Indicative only. Your DPR, layout, module choice, GCR and topography set the real number — this estimator exists to size a land brief, not to design a plant. Bigha shown is Rajasthan pucca bigha at 0.2529 hectare. Not technical, legal or investment advice.
Our evacuation-led site screen
The renewables screen — in the order that saves money
A block that fails on evacuation fails at any price — so that is tested before anyone visits anything.
Land-intensity planning figures and the full 12-point screen are in the sections below. Not technical advice.
The order matters. We test the things that can kill the site before we spend your money on the things that can only improve it.
| # | What we check | Why it is in this order |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Distance and voltage of the nearest evacuation point | Fails here, fails everywhere. Screened before any site visit. |
| 2 | Total contiguous area achievable, and the shape | An array does not care about acreage in the abstract; it cares whether the acreage sits together. |
| 3 | Terrain, slope and shading | Undulation and obstructions cost GCR and yield, and both are visible on a walk. |
| 4 | Khatedar count and co-owner tree across the block | This is your real timeline driver, not the acreage. |
| 5 | Ceiling exposure for the acquiring or leasing entity | A structuring question that must be answered before agreements are signed. |
| 6 | Encumbrance across every khasra — रहननामा, litigation, pending नामांतरण | One pledged parcel inside the block can stall the whole project. |
| 7 | Access track for module and transformer transport | Oversize loads have to reach site. Village lanes often cannot take them. |
| 8 | Existing cultivation, grazing use and habitation proximity | Unaddressed local use becomes a social risk during construction. |
| 9 | Water availability for module cleaning; salinity | Parts of the Sambhar and Nawa side carry genuine salinity. Worth knowing early. |
| 10 | Flood, drainage and water-body buffers | Buffers silently reduce the usable envelope. |
| 11 | Land class and conversion route | Determines the charge basis and the approval path — see below. |
| 12 | GPS boundary walked against bhu-naksha | Record area, map shape and ground reality disagree more often than anyone expects. |
Conversion and ceiling — the two rules that shape a renewables brief
Summarised for planning as at July 2026. Not legal advice — confirm the operative text and take counsel.
- Who holds? Does an aggregator buy and then lease to you, or facilitate a lease directly in your name? These are different exposures and different price outcomes.
- Counterparty form. Some sponsors — particularly international ones — cannot engage an individual aggregator on compliance grounds and need an incorporated, contractable entity. Raise this before the mandate.
- Exclusive use for the full term. The lease must assure uninterrupted, exclusive possession for the duration of your offtake arrangement, with every co-owner as a signatory and the long lease registered.
Lease or purchase — how the two compare
| Long lease | Purchase | |
|---|---|---|
| Capital | Preserved for the plant; rent runs against project cash flow. | Locked into land at financial close. |
| Owner appetite in our belt | Usually higher — the family keeps the asset and gains an income. | Lower for ancestral holdings, higher for absentee owners. |
| Title risk | Shifts to possession quality — co-owner signatures, registration, term certainty. | Conventional title chain, mutation and encumbrance risk. |
| Ceiling exposure | Structure-dependent and not automatically avoided. Counsel question. | Direct and must be sized before acquisition. |
| End of term | Restoration, renewal and equipment-removal terms must be drafted upfront. | Residual land value stays with you. |
If you are the landowner, not the developer
PM-KUSUM — what it funds, and where it actually standsपीएम-कुसुम — कौन सा हिस्सा किसके लिए, और आज की स्थिति
The scheme has three components. Only one of them is about land, and it is the one landowners in this belt are usually being approached about.
| Component | What it covers | Who it is for |
|---|---|---|
| A | 10,000 MW of decentralised ground or stilt-mounted grid-connected solar or other renewable plants, each 500 kW to 2 MW. The DISCOM notifies substation-wise surplus capacity and invites applications. Power is bought by the DISCOM at a feed-in tariff set by the State Electricity Regulatory Commission. | Individual farmers, groups of farmers, cooperatives, panchayats, FPOs and Water User Associations — together called the Renewable Power Generator. This is the land component. |
| B | 14 lakh standalone solar pumps up to 7.5 HP, for off-grid areas where grid supply is not available. | Individual farmers. Nothing to do with leasing land. |
| C | Solarisation of 35 lakh grid-connected pumps — either Individual Pump Solarisation, or Feeder Level Solarisation, where one plant is built at the agricultural feeder instead of at each pump. | Farmers with an existing grid connection; FLS is run by the DISCOM. Rajasthan’s SKAY sits here — see below. |
Component A — the terms that decide whether it is worth it
Component A is not a capital subsidy for the landowner. There is no cheque for a share of the project cost. The value reaches a landowner one of two ways, and the difference between them is the whole negotiation:
- You build it. You are the Renewable Power Generator and you sell power to the DISCOM at the SERC-approved feed-in tariff. You carry the equity, the financing and the performance risk.
- A developer builds it on your land. MNRE’s own wording is that where the farmer or group cannot arrange the equity, they may develop through a developer or the local DISCOM, and in that case "the land owner will get lease rent as mutually agreed between the parties." Mutually agreed is doing a lot of work in that sentence. There is no scheme-fixed lease rate. The rent you get is the rent you negotiate.
The DISCOM, separately, is eligible for a procurement-based incentive of ₹0.40 per unit purchased or ₹6.6 lakh per MW installed, whichever is less, for five years from the commercial operation date. That incentive is the DISCOM’s, not yours — worth knowing when someone describes it as "government support for your project."
Components B and C — the cost-sharing, as notified
For a standalone pump (B) or individual pump solarisation (C), the notified split is 30% central financial assistance of the benchmark or tender cost, whichever is lower, at least 30% state subsidy, and at most 40% from the farmer — of which bank finance can cover up to 30%, leaving roughly 10% to pay upfront. A higher 50% CFA applies in the North Eastern states, Sikkim, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Lakshadweep and the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Rajasthan is not in that list. Under Component C (IPS), solar PV capacity of up to twice the pump capacity in kW is allowed, and surplus power can be sold to the DISCOM.
For feeder level solarisation the CFA is 30% of the installation cost, capped at ₹1.05 crore per MW, over a 25-year project period, in CAPEX or RESCO mode.
State allocation is the real gate. Quantities under B and C are allocated state by state by MNRE after a screening committee, and projects must be completed within 24 months of MNRE sanction. A district can be "in the scheme" and still have no quantity left.
PM-KUSUM 2.0 — announced, not notified
Corpus figures and capacity targets for KUSUM 2.0 are circulating in trade press. We are not repeating them here, because they do not appear in any notification and a lease you sign today cannot be priced off a number that has not been published. When the guidelines are issued they will appear on the MNRE scheme page linked below. कुसुम 2.0 की घोषणा हुई है, अधिसूचना नहीं। अभी इसके आधार पर कोई अनुबंध न करें।
SKAY — the Rajasthan route for a landownerसौर कृषि आजीविका योजना — जमीन मालिक के लिए
Saur Krishi Aajeevika Yojana (SKAY) is the Rajasthan DISCOMs’ scheme built under PM-KUSUM Component C, feeder level solarisation — not Component A, which is where most secondary write-ups place it wrongly. Its purpose is narrow and practical: create a land bank near substations that already carry mostly agricultural load, so a developer does not spend a year assembling parcels.
| How it works | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Rajasthan DISCOMs identify 33/11 kV substations with predominantly agricultural feeders and assess the solar capacity that can be set up at each. | Your land is only interesting if it is near one of those substations. Distance to the substation, not road frontage, is the first question. |
| Landowners register barren or unutilised land on the SKAY portal; developers register to find it. The plant is set up in RESCO mode, preferably within about a 5 km radius of the identified substation. | Registration is a listing, not an allotment. Nothing is guaranteed by registering, and no one should charge you a "sanction fee" for it. |
| The state’s stated intent is a tripartite arrangement involving the landowner, the developer and the DISCOM. | Read the lease before you read the brochure. Tenure, escalation, restoration at end of term and what happens on default are yours to negotiate — the scheme does not fix them. |
How to apply — and in what order
- Get the record straight first. Jamabandi and Bhu-Naksha in the applicant’s own name, mutation complete, no pending encumbrance. A name mismatch between the record and Aadhaar is the most common reason an otherwise good file stalls. Jamabandi is downloadable from apnakhata.rajasthan.gov.in or issued by your Patwari. See our Jamabandi reading guide.
- Check the evacuation point before anything else. Voltage and distance to the nearest substation decides feasibility. Our evacuation-led site screen runs this first for a reason.
- Identify the right route. Pump for your own irrigation → Component B or C through the state implementing agency. Land for a plant → Component A, or SKAY if you want to be listed for feeder-level projects in Rajasthan.
- Apply only through the official portal for that route — the PM-KUSUM national portal and its state implementing agency list, or the SKAY portal. Both are linked below.
- Confirm the sanction position in writing before signing anything, given the 31 March 2026 scheme date and the pending KUSUM 2.0 notification.
Related on this site
Every other central and state land scheme, with official portal links, is on our state-wise Sarkari Yojana hub. If the project is registered under RIPS 2024, the stamp duty and conversion-charge relief on the land itself is set out on our Rajasthan stamp duty guide and, for a factory rather than a plant, on industrial land. RIPS states that projects registered under it are also eligible for MNRE central financial assistance, unless the central scheme bars taking both — that exception is the one to check.
Official sources — verify everything on theseसरकारी स्रोत
- MNRE — PM-KUSUM scheme page (objective, components, cost-sharing, "whom to contact"). Note that at the time of this review this page still shows the scheme period as "Till 31.03.2026" — read it together with the March 2026 timeline memorandum.
- MNRE — comprehensive PM-KUSUM implementation guidelines, 17 January 2024 (PDF)
- PM-KUSUM national portal · state implementing agencies and how to apply · vendors and standalone pump rates by state
- SKAY portal — skayrajasthan.org.in. This is the Rajasthan DISCOMs’ portal and sits on .org.in, not .gov.in. Scheme-name lookalike sites are common; if in doubt reach it through the Rajasthan Energy Department rather than from a search advertisement or a WhatsApp forward.
Checked against the above sources in July 2026. Scheme dates, allocations and cost-sharing change by notification — confirm the current position on the official portal on the day you act. AgriZameen is an independent land information platform, not a government body, not an implementing agency and not a channel partner for any scheme. We cannot sanction, expedite or guarantee any application, and nothing on this page is legal, tax or investment advice.
Questions developers ask
Do you buy the land or arrange it in our name?
Either, and it is the first thing to settle in writing because it changes everything downstream — ceiling exposure, stamp duty, who signs the lease, and what your compliance team can accept. Some international sponsors cannot engage an individual aggregator at all and need an incorporated counterparty; if that applies to you, raise it before the mandate, not during diligence.
Why does ceiling matter if we are only leasing?
Because agricultural holding limits attach to the holder, and legal commentary in Rajasthan has flagged that aggregating project land — including by way of lease — may still be exposed to ceiling requirements depending on the structure. It is a live structuring question for your counsel, and it is far cheaper to answer before the first agreement than after thirty of them.
Does the land need conversion for a solar project?
The April 2026 amendment to Rajasthan’s rural conversion rules brought renewable energy projects — solar, wind, biomass, hydro, pumped storage, battery storage and pooling substations — into a defined framework, with conversion charges reported at a concessional fraction of industrial rates and time-bound disposal by revenue officers. What applies to your parcel depends on its location and classification. We map the route and file it; your counsel confirms the position.
How far from a substation is too far?
That is an evacuation and cost question for your engineering team, not a rule we can set — but it is the first filter we apply, because a block that fails on evacuation distance fails regardless of how good the land and price are. Give us the maximum distance and the voltage level you need and we will screen against it before anyone visits.
What should be in the lease that developers most often miss?
The one that causes the most later grief is an assurance of uninterrupted and exclusive use for the full term of the offtake arrangement — not just a rent clause. Alongside it: registration of a long lease, every co-owner as a signatory, a clean position on existing cultivation and grazing use, access-track rights across neighbouring parcels, and what happens on the owner’s death or sale. Your counsel drafts it; we make sure the record supports it.
Can you handle 500 or 1,000 acres?
Not in our belt, honestly. Blocks at that scale in Rajasthan are sourced in the western districts where holdings are larger and government land is in play, and we do not claim village-level knowledge there. What we can do at that scale is work through local partners and tell you plainly that is what we are doing. In the Jaipur–Ajmer belt our useful range is the smaller, evacuation-adjacent and distributed-scale end.
Do you also work for the landowner?
We publish a landowner-facing page and we do register land from owners — so on any given parcel we tell both sides in writing who we are engaged by, and we do not take a fee from both sides on the same parcel without written disclosure to both. If that transparency is uncomfortable for a counterparty, that is itself useful information.
Send a renewables land requirement
Solar · BESS · hybrid land requirement
Capacity and evacuation constraint are the two lines that matter most. Everything else we can work out on a call.
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