<![CDATA[Solar pumping and smart irrigation are often combined as a technological solution to agricultural water, energy, and carbon constraints. Their sustainability, however, depends on more than replacing a diesel pump or automating a valve. This narrative review synthesizes evidence on solar-powered irrigation, soil- and climate-informed scheduling, Internet of Things architectures, rebound risk, and groundwater governance. It then translates the synthesis into IriTap, a conceptual radio-frequency identification (RFID)-enabled framework for Indonesian smallholder and communal irrigation. The literature indicates that sensors and automated control can improve the timing and quantity of irrigation, while photovoltaic pumping can sharply reduce operational fossil-energy use. Yet cheap marginal pumping energy may also encourage over-abstraction, and poorly calibrated sensors, unreliable connectivity, weak maintenance, or inequitable access can offset technical benefits. RFID is therefore positioned narrowly as an authentication, entitlement, and transaction-recording layer—not as a substitute for soil-moisture, flow, pressure, weather, or water-level sensing. The proposed architecture combines photovoltaic supply, appropriately sized pumping and storage, agronomic sensors, flow metering, local control, fail-safe valves, offline data logging, and transparent user rules. A staged validation agenda is specified using water delivery, energy, soil-moisture control, reliability, maintenance, and equity indicators; no untested performance claim is made. The review concludes that low-carbon irrigation should be evaluated as a water–energy–food governance system. Solar power and automation are enabling technologies, but sustainable outcomes require abstraction limits, agronomic calibration, local maintainability, shared accountability, and evidence from field trials.]]>
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