Korea Power Corp. said Monday it has launched a special task force dedicated to tackling structural and systemic constraints that keep South Korea’s burgeoning renewable energy industry from growing.

According to the state-run utility, it will construct power grids preemptively in regions where renewable energy facilities are expected to be built, including Shinan and Yeonggwang in South Jeolla Province.

Since October 2016, Kepco has initiated a policy that guarantees access to power grids for small-scale renewable energy facilities of 1 megawatt or smaller. However, 14.4 gigawatts of the facilities have been concentrated in specific regions in the short term, resulting in power grid shortages of 4.2 gigawatts.

“Kepco will address the shortage of 3.2 gigawatts by next year. To compensate for the remaining 1 gigawatt, Kepco will solve the issue by shortening the construction period of substations to three years from six years and alleviating grid access limits to 12 megawatts from 10 megawatts,” a Kepco official said.

Also, when allocating grids, Kepco will apply different calculation methods.

“As renewable energy facilities rarely take up 100 percent of the grid capacity, from now on, Kepco will assign 70 percent capacity.”

For example, if a 10-megawatt solar farm requests access to the grid, Kepco will allot grid capacity of 7 megawatts, as solar farms seldom reach maximum power output.

By Kim Byung-wook (kbw@heraldcorp.com)