• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.271-279
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• 2015

Global warming has pressured companies to put a greater emphasis on environment management which allows them to reduce environmental impact and costs of their operations. In Korea, the coal-fired power plants take a large account of electricity generation at 31.7% of the total electricity usage in 2014. Thus, environmental impact of coal-fired power plants is significant. This paper illustrated how to compute environmental impact and costs in electricity generation at a coal-fired power plant using MFCA methodology. Compared to the traditional accounting, an advantage of MFCA is to provide information on electricity generation costs and environmental wastes incurring throughout the production process of electricity. Based on MFCA, the coal-fired power plant was able to reduce production cost of electricity by 52.3%, and environmental wastes by 47.7%. As a result, MFCA seemed to be an effective tool in environmental management for power plants.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.607-625
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• 2021

The objective of this study is to estimate the relationship between CO₂ emissions and both nuclear power and renewable energy generation, and compare the cost efficiencies of nuclear power and renewable energy generation in reducing CO₂ emissions in Korea. The results show that nuclear power and renewable energy generation should be increased by 1.344% and 7.874% to reduce CO₂ emissions by 1%, respectively. Using the estimated coefficients and the levelized costs of electricity by source including the external costs, if the current amount of electricity generation is one megawatt-hour, the range of generation cost of nuclear power generation to reduce 1% CO₂ emissions is $0.72~$1.49 depending on the level of external costs. In the case of renewable energy generation, the generation cost to reduce 1% CO₂ emissions is $6.49. That is, to mitigate 1% of CO₂ emissions at the total electricity generation of 353 million MWh in 2020 in Korea, the total generation costs range for nuclear power is $254 million~$526 million for the nuclear power, and the cost for renewable energy is $2.289 billion for renewable energy. Hence, we can conclude that, in Korea, nuclear power generation is more cost-efficient than renewable energy generation in mitigating CO₂ emissions, even with the external costs of nuclear power generation.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.67 no.2
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• pp.179-185
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• 2018

A considerable cost gap between three major power generation technologies, namely nuclear, coal, and combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT), has been a well-established fact in the Korean electricity market. Alternatively, this paper analyzes the levelized costs of electricity (LCOE) of the three technologies reflecting overall social costs of electricity generation including accident risk, $CO_2$ emission, and air pollution damage. The paper unveils to what extent current discriminative subsidies on fuels regarding the social costs, mostly through tax exemptions, affect economic competitiveness of the technologies. In particular, it finds relative positions of coal and CCGT could be altered depending on appreciation level of the social costs. It has limits in analyzing fixed costs of the technologies, however, due to limited data availability of nuclear power, and suggests further studies on the issue.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.111-118
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• 2017

The increased diversity of different types of energy sources requires moving towards smart distribution networks. This paper proposes a probabilistic DG (distributed generation) units planning model to determine technology type, capacity and location of DG units while simultaneously allocating ESS (energy storage systems) based on pre-determined capacities. This problem is studied in a wind integrated power system considering loads, prices and wind power generation uncertainties. A suitable method for DG unit planning will reduce costs and improve reliability concerns. Objective function is a cost function that minimizes DG investment and operational cost, purchased energy costs from upstream networks, the defined cost to reliability index, energy losses and the investment and degradation costs of ESS. Electrical load is a time variable and the model simulates a typical radial network successfully. The proposed model was solved using the DICOPT solver under GAMS optimization software.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.183-191
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• 2013

We address the power generation mix problem that considers not only nuclear and fossil fuels such as oil, coal and LNG but also renewable energy technologies. Unlike nuclear or other generation technologies, the expansion plan of renewable energy is highly uncertain because of its dependency on the government policy and uncertainty associated with technology improvements. To address this issue, we conduct a delphi survey and forecast the capacity of renewable energy. We further propose a stochastic mixed integer programming model that determines an optimal capacity expansion and the amount of power generation using each generation technology. Using the proposed model, we test eight generation mix scenarios and particularly evaluate how much the expansion of renewable energy contributes to the total costs for power generation in Korea. The evaluation results show that the use of renewable energy incurs additional costs.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1999.07c
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• pp.1340-1343
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• 1999

This Paper Presents a new analytic load decrement method for the evaluation of avoided generation costs of independent power producers (IPPs), named as probabilistic load decrement method. Unlike conventional load decrement methods, the proposed method exactly consider the random outage characteristic of a generating unit, economic dispatch order, and the resulting loss of load probability. Therefore, we can Provide the exact generation avoided costs of an IPP by applying the developed method. In the case studies, we have shown the correctness and effectiveness of the method, and compared with conventional load decrement methods.

• Architectural research
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.59-64
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• 2016

Since the massive power outages that hit across the nation in September 2011, a growing imbalance between energy supply and demand has led to a severe backup power shortage. To overcome the energy crisis which is annually repeated, a policy change for deriving energy supply from renewable energy sources and a demand reduction strategy has become essential. Buildings account for 18% of total energy consumption and have great potential for energy efficiency improvements; it is an area considered to be a highly effective target for reducing energy demand by improving buildings' energy efficiency. In this regard, retrofitting buildings to promoting environmental conservation and energy reduction through the reuse of existing buildings can be very effective and essential for reducing maintenance costs and increasing economic output through energy savings. In this study, we compared the energy reduction efficiency of national power energy consumption by unit production volume based on thermal power generation, renewable energy power generation, and initial and operating costs for a building retrofit. The unit production was found to be 13,181GWh/trillion won for bituminous coal-fired power generation, and 5,395GWh/trillion won for LNG power generation, implying that LNG power generation seemed to be disadvantageous in terms of unit production compared to bituminous coal-fired power generation, which was attributable to a difference in unit production price. The unit production from green retrofitting increased to 38,121GWh/trillion won due to the reduced energy consumption and benefits of greenhouse gas reduction costs. Renewable energy producing no greenhouse gas emissions during power generation and showed the highest unit production of 75,638GWh/trillion won, about 5.74 times more effective than bituminous coal-fired power generation.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2009.04a
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• pp.174-176
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• 2009

This paper aims to investigate generation conditions necessary for the most efficient generation by measuring electricity power under various irradiation conditions, since the photovoltaic generation system has high costs and low efficiency. This thesis aims to investigate generation conditions necessary for the most efficient generation by measuring electricity power under various irradiation conditions, since the photovoltaic generation system has high costs and low efficiency. Although the generation power increased with the irradiation, the former did not vary directly as the latter. This meant that the variation of the generation power was concerned in the temperature of a module, the ambient temperature, and the directions of irradiation as well as the irradiation. As for the monthly accumulated irradiation and monthly accumulated power, the maximum irradiation and generation power were observed in May and October and the irradiation, the power and the accumulated generation power were all the highest in spring, followed by fall, summer and winter.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.61 no.9
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• pp.1260-1268
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• 2012

Recently, lack of power reserve margin was observed quite often. In this paper, we studied the method to secure power source for a short time, to cut the utility power peak load, and to reduce the users electricity bills. Emergency diesel generator of an office building is to be converted into a dual-fuel engine generator which is responsible for a portion of the peak load. Compared to the conventional diesel fuel generator, the proposed dual-fuel engine is able to reduce the generation power cost by dual-fuel combustion, and it also mitigates the building's utility power peak load by charging the building's peak load. If the dead resources (a group of emergency dual-fuel engine generators), as a Virtual Power Plant, are operating in peak time, we can significantly reduce future large power development costs. We investigated the current general purpose electricity bills as well as the records of the building electric power usage, and calculated diesel engine generator renovation costs, generation fuel costs, driving conditions, and savings in electricity bills. The proposed dual-fuel engine generation method reduces 18.1% of utility power peak load, and turned out to be highly attractive investment alternative which shows more than 27% of IRR, 76 million won of NPV, and 20~53 months of payback periods. The results of this study are expected to be useful to developing the policy & strategy of the energy department.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.317-324
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• 1999

This study suggests the effectiveness of an "extended" power system evaluation methodology based on LCA and energy input-output analysis techniques. This "extended" evaluation methodology is designed to incorporate total energy system costs through fuel cycle and external costs, including CO$_2$abatement cost. As an empirical test, we applied the methodology to orimulsion-fired power generation technology and found that orimulsion could be considered as in attractive base-load power generation fuel in terms of economic and environmental aspects, compared to conventional coal-fired power plant.