OREANDA-NEWS. February 09, 2015. Indian Railways concluded its first bilateral power procurement agreement on 5th February, 2015 between Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) and North Central Railway. Under the agreement, Railways will buy 50 MW of power from DVC at Auraiya Grid Sub-station facilitated by Railways Energy Management Company Limited, a Joint Venture (JV) of Indian railway and RITES, a PSU of Ministry of Railways.

This is the beginning of energy cost reduction measure being taken up by Railways. Railways are the biggest consumer of the electricity, consuming about 18 billion units per year with peak requirement of about 4000 MW. In order to enable Railways to buy power directly from suppliers, Railways have been notified as ‘Deemed Licensee’ by Ministry of Power.

Railway is working to go for more such contracts at key load centers in the coming days which will enable Railways to generate significant savings in its traction electricity bills.