"Local food" is enjoying soaring popularity. Lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and other favorites are grown nearby and delivered early in the morning, making them fresher and more trustworthy than products shipped from afar. By narrowing the distance between producer and consumer, distribution costs are cut and prices become reasonable.
A similar change is beginning in the electricity industry. Until now, electricity has been generated at large power plants hundreds of kilometers away and supplied to cities or industrial complexes through high-voltage transmission grids. The place where electricity is made and the place where it is used have been far apart. But now, the era of so-called "energy local production for local consumption" (jisanjiso) is opening in earnest, in which eco-friendly electricity is made from the sunlight and wind of the area where one lives and used within that area.
The core infrastructure underpinning this change is the "distribution grid." If the transmission grid can be likened to a massive "main artery" that supplies blood throughout the body, the distribution grid can be compared to the "capillaries" that supply oxygen and nutrients to each individual cell of our body. To stably accommodate renewable energy, whose generation output varies with weather conditions, and to realize local production for local consumption, this distribution grid must become more flexible and smarter than it is now. Only then can we actively respond to the variability of renewable energy, which is projected to expand significantly to 100 GW by 2030.
So how will the distribution grid change? If the existing distribution grid is a passive "deliveryman" that simply transmits electricity brought from power plants, the next-generation distributed distribution grid will also take on the role of a "traffic police officer" that optimizes the production, storage, and consumption of electricity. The previous one-way street is being transformed into a "two-way smart intersection."
The principle is simpler than one might think. First, an energy storage system (ESS) — a kind of "energy dam" — is built throughout the distribution grid. When sunlight and wind are abundant, renewable energy is fully gathered in the distribution grid, then released at moments when electricity is scarce. Through this, the "intermittency" problem of renewable energy can be largely resolved, and power supply can be kept stable even amid changes in the weather.
Add to this an artificial intelligence (AI)-based advanced distribution management system (ADMS), and the power grid will be able to judge and adjust, like a skilled expert, "where to send surplus electricity and where to draw scarce electricity from."
In the process of building the next-generation distributed power grid that will transform the electricity industry ecosystem, the role and responsibility of Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) will also change completely. Whereas KEPCO of the past concentrated on stable power supply and facility operation, going forward it must expand its role in the direction of precisely coordinating and connecting the various distributed resources of the private sector.
To this end, KEPCO is faithfully preparing for the great energy transition by interconnecting the ADMS — which will serve as the eyes and ears of the power grid — with operating platforms such as microgrids (MG), electric vehicle charging (EVC), and virtual power plants (VPP), thereby further advancing a power grid operating system centered on distributed energy. KEPCO will also continue to strengthen its cooperative framework so that the transmission grid and distribution grid can be operated as a single, organic system.
Just as local food grown in neighborhood gardens has reasonably lowered product prices and healthily transformed our food culture, so too will the realization of local production for local consumption through the next-generation distributed power grid raise the efficiency of energy use and lift national competitiveness to a higher level.
