Rly to cut down power bills with new vendor

ALLAHABAD: In an attempt to bring down its staggering electricity bills, north central railway (NCR) will purchase electricity from Adani Power Limited. The decision, as had been mentioned in the railway budget, will help slash the electricity bill by a whopping Rs 150 crore per year because the supply would come at a cheap Rs 3.69 per unit.
Despite being a bulk consumer, railways pays high charges for traction power.It has been procuring power through the state utilities all this while at Rs 6.75 per unit. However, this year’s railway budget announced that now it will procure power through a bidding process at economical tariff from generating companies, power exchanges, and bilateral arrangements.
Accordingly, PSU Railway Energy Management Company Limited (REMCL) on behalf of North Central Railway (NCR) for the first time invited bids under case – 1 bidding as per the Model Tender Document issued by Ministry of Power (MoP). A number of power companies participated in this open bidding process. At Request for Qualification stage, 10 bids were received. Later, at the stage of financial bid at Request for proposal stage, seven bids were received. Against this competitive bidding process, Adani Power Limited emerged successful and has been awarded the contract for supply of 50 MW power for a period of three years.
The agreement was signed on October 15 in the presence of Union railway minister Suresh Prabhu, railway board chairman A K Mital and NCR general manager Arun Saxena.
Talking to TOI, chief public relations officer of NCR, Bijay Kumar said, “We will now purchase electricity from Adani Power Limited as it will substantially reduce the power bill. Earlier, we purchased electricity from NTPC, UPPCL and Damodar Valley but now we will get electricity at comparable lower rate.”