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.

KPX on EnergyNote

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