Doosan Enerbility announced on June 20th that it had signed a supplier agreement valued to be KRW 330 billion with Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) on supplying the main components for the Yeongdong Pumped-Storage Hydropower Plant Units 1 and 2.
The signing ceremony which was held that day at KHNP’s Radiation Health Institute in Jung-gu, Seoul was attended by key figures from both parties, including Jooho Whang, President and CEO of KHNP, and Yeonin Jung, Vice Chairman and COO of Doosan Enerbility.
The Yeongdong Pumped-Storage Hydropower (PSH) Plant, which is designed to have a capacity of 500MW (250MW x 2 units), is scheduled to be built in Yeongdong County of North Chungcheong Province by 2030. This will be Korea’s first construction of a pumped-storage hydropower plant in fourteen years since the last one was built in Yecheon in 2011. The Yeongdong Hydropower Plant will have significance as being the first plant in Korea to have a variable-speed hydropower system installed. With the signing of this agreement, Doosan Enerbility will be taking on the design, manufacturing and installation of all the equipment, including the waterwheel*, generator, electrical and control devices.* A device that acts like the turbine in hydropower plants by converting the kinetic energy of flowing or falling water into mechanical energy, usually rotational energy.
Pumped-storage hydropower is a leading form of eco-friendly energy storage that is used to supplement the intermittency of renewable energy. When there is an energy surplus, the PSH plant stores energy by pumping water uphill to the upper reservoir and then, has this water released to generate electricity when an energy shortage occurs. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), pumped-storage hydropower is the largest form of energy storage worldwide, as it accounted for 66.5% of energy storage solutions as of 2023.
“It is truly meaningful to be able to jointly pursue Korea’s first variable-speed hydropower plant construction project together like this,” said Doosan Enerbility’s Vice Chairman Yeonin Jung. “It was owing to KHNP’s active efforts in pursuing the pumped-storage hydropower plant project that we were able to establish the foundation for the local manufacturing of the PSH plant components, which will play a crucial role in the expansion of renewable energy.”
According to the South Korean government’s 11th Basic Plan for Long-Term Electricity Supply and Demand, there are plans to have PSH plants with a combined installed capacity of 5.7GW (total 9 units) built by 2037, and a contractor is to be selected for the implementation of an additional 1.25GW in the second half of this year. Doosan Enerbility is currently engaged in a partnership with Austria’s Andritz, the leading global supplier of hydropower equipment, which involves helping Korea obtain technological self-reliance for the engineering of pumped-storage hydropower plant components.
