Blueprint of Energy Industry
The Korean government proposed a blueprint to explore six new energy businesses and create a 2.08 billion won (US$2.01 million) market by 2017, along with more than 10,200 related new jobs.
The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced a plan to discover six new energy businesses and develop them to become future industries, together with business individuals, at the 11th Presidential Advisory Council on Science and Technology on July 17. The six businesses are electric power demand management, integrated energy control services, independent micro-grids, solar cell rental, electric vehicles and charging, and thermal effluent businesses.
Electric power demand management invests in power-saving facilities in buildings or plants, and creates profits by bidding on the demand-shrinking amount and price in the power market, with a small amount of electricity saved, when the demand-shrinking price is lower than the power-generating cost. In this business model, only 30 percent participation is allocated to big corporations, and access to power consumption data owned by the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) is guaranteed. Later on, business participants will be included in an Energy Service Company (ESCO), receive government subsidies on national policy projects, and expand abroad supported by the government.
Integrated energy control services will install Energy Storage Systems (ESSs) and Energy Management Systems (EMSs) individually for high-energy consumers, and provide wide-ranging services from investment consulting in power saving facilities to after-care.
Independent micro-grid businesses replace diesel power generators in island areas which have a high cost of power generation with “new and renewable + ESS” converged micro-grids. The costs of running diesel power generators in the long term will be invested in new and renewable energy and ESS preemptively, and economic feasibility which enables private companies to participate will be guaranteed.
Solar cell rental businesses install solar cell systems in households using more than 350kwh of electricity per month, lowers the costs, and receives rental fees and production certificate prices from those households. Most importantly, solar cell rentals will be easy and convenient for households just like water purifier rental services.