Consumption soars to record amid deep chill, fueling power shortage concerns


The government is introducing a series of contingency measures to cut power consumption as the cold spell drives up electricity demand to record levels.

With the cold snap gripping the nation, even in the warmer southern regions, electricity demand has shot up, setting new records three times already this month.

On Monday, the country’s electricity demand shot up to greater than 7.3 million kilowatt hours, breaking the previous record set on Jan. 10, which was about 400,000 kilowatt higher than the record of Jan 7.

With the rise in consumption, Korea’s generating capacity is being pushed to its limits, fueling concerns of a power shortage.

On Monday, the country’s reserve capacity was pushed down to 5.5 percent, far short of the 10 percent line considered to provide a sufficient buffer for times of high demand such as the summer and winter months.

In addition, a power cut that occurred at an industrial complex in Yeosu, South Jeolla Province on Monday is fuelling worries that the surge in demand could lead to similar incidences in other such complexes.

On Monday, power to the complex was cut for about 20 minutes. While power was out for a relatively short period of time, damages sustained by companies operating in the area, including the refiner GS Caltex, are estimated to run into tens if not hundreds of billions of won.

As such, related issues have become a topic of urgent discussion at the highest level of government.

“It is important to carry out energy-saving measures in response to high oil prices and rapidly rising electricity consumption,” President Lee Myung-bak said at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. He added that a policy that has been established once needs to form the basis for the next, and therefore efforts must be made to become more efficient in saving energy this year using the experience of related measures from last year.

Lee also urged concerned government bodies to closely monitor the execution of related measures and firmly establish such practices.

On Monday, the government announced emergency plans to cut energy consumption that limits the temperature to 18 degrees Celsius at all government buildings. The measure also prohibits the use of personal electric heaters, and calls for heaters to be switched off from 11 a.m. to midday, and then again from 5 p.m. until 6 p.m.

Similar measures that prohibit temperatures from exceeding 20 degrees Celsius will also be applied to 441 large buildings including department and discount stores from Jan. 24.

In addition, the interval between subway trains will be increased by 1 to 3 minutes between 10 a.m. and midday. The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs is in charge of measures regarding subway trains, which will be implemented according to changes in electricity consumption.

However, such measures are temporary and will not be able to provide a fundamental solution to a problem arising year after year during both the coldest and hottest months.

Although the government has revealed plans to massively increase Korea’s generating capacity, it may be some time before the country will be able to put concerns over power shortages completely behind it.

According to the government’s electricity supply plan, 49 trillion won ($44 billion) will be injected into increasing the country’s generating capacity to 112.59 gigawatts by 2024, up nearly 56 percent from 2009’s capacity of 72.26 gigawatts.

Over the period the government expects electricity consumption to grow at an annual average of 1.9 percent to reach 551.6 billion kilowatt hours in 2024 from 423.8 billion kilowatt hours recorded last year.

While the country will have a more-than-sufficient reserve capacity of 18.2 percent by the end of the plan, the figure will remain below 10 percent at least until 2014, leaving the country open to repeats of this winter.

By Choi He-suk  (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)