Punjab has good solar irradiance and a very large agricultural power demand, and the two have not been connected at scale.
Solar pumps have been promoted for agricultural use. They cut the subsidy bill and they remove the last constraint on groundwater extraction, since a farmer with a solar pump can run it all day at no cost, which is the opposite of what the aquifer needs.
That contradiction is well recognised in the literature and no Indian state has resolved it. Schemes that pay farmers for surplus solar power fed back to the grid are the proposed answer, on the reasoning that a farmer who can sell power has a reason not to pump water.
Rooftop and utility-scale solar in Punjab is modest relative to its potential and relative to Rajasthan and Gujarat.
Land is the constraint: Punjab's land is among the most productive agricultural land in the world and using it for panels is a real cost, unlike in a desert.
The one clear opportunity is on canal tops, roofs and marginal land, and progress has been slow.
Punjab has good insolation and very little installed solar compared with Rajasthan and Gujarat, because land is expensive and fragmented and the grid is already stressed.
The canal top installations avoid the land problem and reduce evaporation, and the programme has grown slowly since 2014.
Solar pumps would break the link between free power and unlimited pumping only if they came with a metered feed-in arrangement. Without that they make the pumping cheaper still.