NEW DELHI, Feb 6: The Indian Railways concluded its first bilateral power procurement agreement on 5th February, 2015 between the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) and North Central Railway. Under the agreement, the Railways will buy 50 MW of power from DVC at Auraiya Grid Sub-station facilitated by the Railways Energy Management Company Limited, a Joint Venture of Indian Railways and RITES, a PSU of the Ministry of Railways. This is the beginning of energy cost reduction measures being taken up by the Railways. Indian Railways is the biggest consumer of 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, it has been notified as a ‘Deemed Licensee’ by the Ministry of Power. Indian Railways is working to opt for more such contracts at key load centers in the coming days, which will enable it to generate significant savings in its traction electricity bills.