Water Management in Agriculture Keeping in View Frequent Power Failure Problem in Rural India

Abstract

Agriculture is one of the most important sectors in India. Healthy growth of crop requires timely and sufficient supply of water. Most of the farmers use water pumps for irrigation which work on electric power. The supply of power in some rural areas is bit irregular and unpredictable. Maximum time of farmers is wasted in monitoring the availability of power supply The frequent power cut and low voltage supply create a big hurdle to the farmer for supplying water to the crop. In turn they keep the pump supply ON continuously which leads to the wastage of electricity and water. The uncontrolled wastage of water can cause soil degradation and affects the crop growth due to excess water consumption by the crops. The objective of this project is to develop an automated Programmable Logic Control based system for water supply. The system first checks for the availability of water and the supply of electricity. It uses the timer and relay logic. Specific time is set for every activity. The system is designed in such a way that it turns on automatically when the power supply is available. Using the sequential logic and setting up the timers the pump On/OFF activity and adequate water supply of water to the crop is automatically managed. Sprinklers are used for effective irrigation. The developed system optimizes the use of electricity and manages adequate supply of water. The system can also be programmed for various types of crops in a farm and for adding the dose of fertilizers.

Keywords— Agriculture, PLC, Timer, Automatic Water Supply