South Korea’s Photovoltaic Power Generation Market Has Huge Development Potential

At present, the Korean government is sparing no effort to promote the development of the photovoltaic power generation industry and has launched a renewable energy portfolio standard project. The project took effect last year and has replaced the original feed-in tariff subsidy policy. According to the project, South Korea’s photovoltaic installed capacity target is 1.2GW in 2015. As another important emerging photovoltaic market after Europe, South Korea has a vast territory, superior lighting conditions, and huge market development potential.

As the General Administration of Customs of China came to an end this year against the US-Korea polysilicon double-crossing, South Korea’s polysilicon industry was once constrained, which also affected the further development of the photovoltaic industry. Posco, Samsung, LG and Sunkyung (SK) and other South Korean companies Companies are gradually withdrawing from the photovoltaic module market, but this does not mean that the Korean government's enthusiasm for solar energy has subsided.

According to an official from South Korea's Ministry of Knowledge Economy, South Korea's photovoltaic power generation industry is facing a crisis due to China's low-price offensive. In order to overcome this crisis, the South Korean government will formulate a series of relevant countermeasures to achieve the goal of becoming the world's fifth largest solar energy industry by 2015. policy goals of powerful countries. According to the newly introduced industrial development plan, South Korea began to build new solar equipment with a scale of 100MW last year and began to put into power generation in early 2013.

According to a set of data released by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy of South Korea, the total amount of support funds for the development of new and renewable energy technologies in 2008 reached 199.4 billion won. For the solar energy sector, it was decided to allocate 10 billion to each strategic technology research and development project every year. South Korean won, with a maximum support period of 5 years, to promote early breakthroughs in core technology development and put into use.

In addition, on May 22 this year, the Ministry of Unification of South Korea announced that the South Korean government has recently finalized the "demonstration project to build a renewable energy industrial park in the Kaesong Park." If the negotiations between South Korea and North Korea progress smoothly, the project is expected to be launched later this year. Construction officially started half a year ago. According to the report, if the pilot work is effective, the renewable energy production capacity will be gradually expanded and the production capacity will eventually be expanded to 20MW.

In July this year, South Korean President Park Geun-hye revealed the details of the latest renewable energy plan, which will create six types of renewable energy-related businesses, one of which will focus on developing the emerging domestic solar energy rental market. According to reports, the solar leasing service allows ordinary households and commercial institutions to rent photovoltaic equipment at a fixed price and obtain income from the sale of power supply.

According to official data released by BP World Energy, the installed capacity of South Korea's photovoltaic power generation system reached 274MW in 2008, ranking fourth in the world and first in Asia in terms of installed capacity. By the end of 2012, the cumulative installed capacity of photovoltaic systems in South Korea reached 959.2MW. Last year, the country’s installed photovoltaic capacity was 442MW. It is conceivable that with the strong promotion of the government, the installed capacity of photovoltaic systems in South Korea will continue to grow, and even lead to a national solar power generation boom. South Korea will host the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang in 2018. Perhaps the government can learn from Brazil's "Green World Cup" approach and build photovoltaic power generation systems in major sports venues to host another green sports event.

Planning Seoul’s “Sunlight City” The Seoul City Government in South Korea is gearing up to actively implement new plans in order to become a leading solar city. According to reports, the latest version of Seoul’s “solar map” has been finalized and announced in April 2014. The map will show areas suitable for photovoltaic development and the savings that rooftop photovoltaic installations can provide.

Last year, the Seoul Municipal Government (SMG) announced a plan to transform the city into a "Sunlight City". According to the plan, as of the end of 2014, Seoul's newly installed photovoltaic capacity was 320MW. This goal is also part of Seoul's "Less More Nuclear Power Plants" (ULNPP) project. The ULNPP project aims to promote the development of new energy (including photovoltaics) through a series of measures and open up Seoul's road to energy independence.

Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in May 2011, South Korea's awareness of energy independence has also increased. The ULNPP project can be seen as part of SMG's response to public opposition to reliance on nuclear energy. SMG plans to install a photovoltaic system with an installed capacity of 100MW for a public school building in Seoul - this is also part of the ULNPP project. These photovoltaic systems will have "syllabus" features to increase public awareness of the remarkable qualities of solar energy. Another plan to increase public awareness of photovoltaic power generation is to launch a "solar map", which is expected to be released next month.

According to LG Solar, the Korean government is currently sparing no effort in promoting the development of the photovoltaic industry and has launched the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) project. The project took effect last year and has replaced the original feed-in tariff subsidy policy. According to the project, South Korea’s photovoltaic installed capacity target is 1.2GW in 2015. LG Solar stated that the RPS project alone is not enough to be a strong driving force for expanding the solar market, and relevant organizations and companies are considering other options, such as restoring the feed-in tariff subsidy policy. One of the reasons for launching this program is that the Korean market tends to choose locally manufactured components. Since Korean buyers focus on product durability and reliability, they prefer local brands. At the same time, they also want the components to be competitively priced. As the size of the installation continues to expand, the influence of this factor will gradually weaken. Utilities prefer competitively priced products. However, whether it is a local company or an overseas company, profitability or internal rate of return is the most important factor for companies.