신·재생에너지전력 시장활성화방안 연구

Abstract

1. Research Purpose The Korean government recently sets a goal of replacing 7% of power consumption with renewable energies by 2011. While the existing policies on renewable energy puts an emphasis on the quantitative aspect of supply, a qualitative dimension and the demand side of renewable energy are not fully discussed. Popular policies such as Feed-In-Tariff and RPS can help attracting more investor to finance renewable electricity generators. But it is not settled who pays more costs in producing electricity with renewable energy, and how the generated electricity is to connect into the grid. This study is to suggest several policy options to promote renewable electricity through the ’green pricing’, a demand-side policy, and the improvement in grid connection. 2. Research Findings By case studies on green pricing in foreign countries, the following implications are recognized for design of green pricing scheme : Firstly, a selection of renewable energy is an important factor, because the green premium is dependent on the kind of renewable energy. Secondly, in order to obtain the consumers trust, a considerable amount of information on renewable energy should be given to customers. They are employing the RECS(Renewable Energy Certificate System), certificated by a neutral organization. Finally, for effective marketing, it needs to segment the market, to develop products, and to advertise the green power which provides consumers with RE information. From the survey of consumers’s willingness to pay for green electricity, major findings are as follows: Firstly, higher production cost of the green electricity must be compensated by higher electricity price(’collective payment for green electricity’) although that cannot be easily carried. The ’advertising’ role of the green pricing may help ease the opposition of consumer to general increase of electricity price because the (survey)respondents’ support to the ’collective payment’ depends on what extent they know about renewable energy to. Secondly, there is strong correlation between a supporting ’green pricing’ and an environmentally-friendly attitude. Respondents, who are accustomed to environmentally-friendly activities, are likely to pay more. This explains that the concerted effort ’environmental NGOs’, ’energy NGOs’ and ’organic food coops’ is necessary to settle the green power market. In case of greed-connection, major findings are as follows: Firstly, in most cases, distributed generators are required to pay the costs incurred in connecting their facilities to the distribution grid system with no exception even for the renewables. Secondly, grid-connection is in the jurisdiction of the federal government while distribution system is under the jurisdiction of a state government or a local autonomy. The federal government in cooperation with relevant agencies designs a set of codes and standards for interconnection, based on which state and local public utilities commissions or individual electric utilities design their own codes and standards. Thirdly, a "cost-payer principle" is applied in most countries examined, specifying that a party of connecting its facility to the grid is required to pay the costs incurred, depending on whether deep-connected or shallow-connected is applied. Lastly, a number of countries offer a series of incentives to a grid or a distribution system operator to promote renewable-powered electricity facilities. In the case of Korea, a cost-payer principle is currently applied in the grid-interconnection, and strict rules and specifications are practiced to protect and maintain a stable operation of the grid system. 3. Research Results & Policy Suggestions The case studies on developed countries and the domestic condition within the nation prove that it is necessary to commercialize green power and to establish related regimes in order to introduce and operate ’green pricing’. For the commercialization, the government should require the facilities to release the information that contains energy mix, the location of power plants, and expenditure of the premium. It is necessary to participate ’Korean Electric Power Corporation(KEPC)’, ’environmental NGOs’, ’energy NGOs’ and ’consumer NGOs’ in deciding the scope and depth of the information provided. It should be obligatory that not only the retail product of ’green power’ but the wholesale product generated in renewable energy plants are also certificated by trust-worthy authorities. To avoid collision with the present Feed-in-Tariff, KEPC should either secure green power sources to be excluded from the financial support by the present Feed-in-Tariff or obtain (indirectly) the green power facilities by providing premium profit from green power sales to the fund of Feed-in-Tariff. When RPS is introduced, green power premium should be earmarked to purchase renewable energy power more than mandatory ratio. Costs to interconnect between the grid system and renewable-powered generators, such as wind farms and PV systems, are contingent upon geographical conditions as well as scales of power generation in Korea. Interconnection fees are in the range between 4% and 20% out of the total capital investment. This cost level is not discouraging in light of the analysis in this study. Nevertheless, the current technical standards of grid interconnection should be lowered so that renewable energies can be widely considered as a distributed generation option. The optimal level should be decided based on the impact analysis of the current practices in terms of technical and cost burden on both power generators and grid operators. Furthermore, the overall impact on the whole society and the beneficiaries of the interconnection should be investigated to set the direction for supporting activities in connecting renewable power generating facilities to grid systems. Such an analytical approach helps decide which party has to pay what part of the cost during the incursion of interconnection. In addition, other government programs such as feed-in tariff, subsidies and financial incentives, should be considered when the level and scope of supporting interconnection costs are determinated.