KEPCO on EnergyNote

How Korea's electricity market actually works: KPX, the system marginal price, and why KEPCO lost money

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 21:40:00 +0900

In December 2022, the hourly price at which Korea’s power generators were paid averaged KRW 267.63 per kilowatt-hour (about 19.8 cents) for the month. The state utility that had to buy all of it, KEPCO, was selling electricity to households and factories at a small fraction of that. The gap between those two numbers is the plainest way to understand why Korea’s national utility lost roughly KRW 43 trillion (about $32 billion) in three years.

Korea's power grid explained: where the electricity is, where the demand is, and the HVDC lines meant to connect them

Sun, 13 Sep 2026 13:56:00 +0900

Anyone sizing up South Korea for a data center or a factory ends up with two maps, and the first shows where electricity is made: nuclear and coal on both coasts, solar across the southwest, all far from Seoul. The second shows where it is used. It is mostly the capital region.

How Korea's electricity bill works — and what the nuclear share has to do with it

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 23:56:00 +0900

On August 2, 2026, the city of Yangsan in Korea’s southeast recorded 42.5°C, the highest temperature ever observed in the country. A month later the August bills arrived, and a four-person household that ran its air conditioner ten hours a day is now looking at a number it does not recognize.