Abstract
Hydro-electric power generation from multi-purpose dams has been playing important roles in the electric power supply network in Korea. Although the total share of hydro power in national electricity supply now becomes very small, the peak-shaving and frequency control capability of hydro power helps the power company enormously in maintaining the quality of power. But since the company that builds and operates the multi-purpose dams in Korea has to sell all the electricity produced to the monopolistic utility, there have been various problems in justifying the investment, designing pricing mechanism, and controlling operations of the power plants. In addition, economic evaluation of the hydro power has been distorted by a variety of reasons and hence it has been very difficult to encourage effective development and utilization of national water resources. To make the problem worse, both parties are public companies with X-inefficiency problems. Thus, changing environment requires to reengineer the system that governs hydro power generation. We address the problems of Korean hydro-electric power generation system in four areas: the investment justification process, the operations decison right of the hydro power plants, the pricing of the purchased-power, and the negotiation of contract revision. Then we propose improvement directions of new hydro-electric power system in view of static and dynamic efficiency, X-inefficiency and equity.