PHOTON International The Photovoltaic Magazine

South Korean PV roofs program back on track

A South Korean PV roofs program, which had been postponed due the conflict in Iraq (see PI 3/2003, p. 32), has been given the go-ahead by the country's Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Energy (MOCIE).

	© Korea Energy Management Corp. (KEMCO)
More to come: This 53 kW system installed in 2001 at Chosun University is a precursor to a roofs program whose original 90 MW target could grow.

On April 13, MOCIE and the Planning and Budget Ministry agreed to increase spending on alternative energy sources by 21 percent to 90.3 billion KRW ($72.9 million) in 2003, in an effort to reach a renewable energy goal of 5 percent in 2011, from 1.4 percent in 2002.

According to Kim Yong Tae, deputy director of MOCIE's energy technology division, 38 billion KRW ($30.7 million) will be used to start the Solar Land 2010 subsidy program. Kim expects the original 90 MW target of installing 3 kW systems on 30,000 homes by 2010 will be increased when an RD&D master plan is finished, probably in June. He declined to speculate on how much the goal might rise. The rebate, available for on- and off-grid systems, will be 10,666 KRW ($8.62) per watt, covering up to 70 percent of the installed costs. The program will be administered for MOCIE by the Korean Energy Management Corporation. Tae says MOCIE is interested in introducing net metering. He did not have any information on whether a premium feed-in tariff was also under consideration.

South Korea had 5.4 MW of installed PV capacity at the end of 2002, of which 4.8 MW was off-grid. In 2002, a total of 475 kW were installed.