Korea reopens Honam grid to support Samsung, SK chip plants

Korea is set to reopen the power grid in its southwestern Honam region to new renewable energy projects, a move aimed at securing power for four new chip plants in the works.

Korea’s Environment Minister Kim Sung-whan announced a massive overhaul of the power grid system on Tuesday, saying the government would lift Honam's designation as a grid-constrained zone starting Oct. 1, allowing battery systems to draw more capacity from the existing grid rather than building new transmission lines.

The government designates regions as grid-constrained zones when the local transmission network becomes oversaturated. Once a substation receives that designation, no new power plants may connect to it until grid capacity is expanded.

Demand for electricity is surging with the growth of chipmaking and AI data centers, but grid shortages have stranded renewable power in regions like Honam. The region hosts a large share of the country's solar farms, but building transmission lines to carry that power to the Seoul metropolitan area, where demand is concentrated, has lagged due to local opposition and permitting delays, leading to its designation as a grid-constrained zone in August 2024.

If so, the congestion, once projected to last until 2033 or 2034, will likely ease as early as January. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix plan four fabs that will require about 6.3 gigawatts of power.

The first step is "flexible," or non-firm, access for projects waiting to connect. Operators have long allotted grid capacity based on a plant's maximum output, but solar power is intermittent, and solar farms typically use only about 15 percent of a distribution line's capacity.

Under the new rules, projects may connect beyond the grid's limits, with output briefly curtailed when generation spikes. The change raises solar capacity from 14 to 16 megawatts per distribution line and from 50 to 60 megawatts per substation, adding 2.6 gigawatts in Honam without new infrastructure.

"Instead of waiting for new lines to be built, which will likely need at least nine years, we aim to use the grid we have as efficiently as possible," Minister Kim said.

The government will also install storage systems within the grid itself to make fuller use of existing infrastructure. Batteries at substations and along distribution networks will absorb midday solar output and release it at night, a strategy expected to accommodate an additional 4.6 gigawatts of solar in congested areas by 2030.

The ministry is also cracking down on speculative developers that secure grid access but never build. It has already reclaimed 9 gigawatts of connection rights and will defer rights for long-delayed projects until they are ready to operate, a step expected to free more than 10 gigawatts in Honam alone by 2030.

The new plans align with the country’s broader goal of expanding the grid's renewable capacity from 119 gigawatts today to up to 171 gigawatts by 2030.

BY SARAH CHEA   [[email protected]]