KEPCO to Hold International Energy Expo in Gwangju

by YuGee / Oct 27, 2016 06:51 AM EDT

An attendee walks past Korea Electric Power Corp. (Kepco) signage displayed at the 22nd World Energy Congress (WEC) in Daegu, South Korea, on Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. The WEC, a global conference on the energy market, will run until Oct. 17. Photographer: S

South Korea's lone power distributor, the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO), will hold an international energy exhibition in November in the city of Gwangju. The event will highlight modern electricity technology and discuss more extensive cooperation with other countries in the field of energy, a report from the Korea JoongAng Daily stated.

The event, which is called the 2016 Bitgaram International Exposition of Electric Power Technology (Bixpo), is slated to start on the second day of November and will last for three days. It will be held at the Kimdaejung Convention Center and about 4,000 business leaders and scholars from 50 different countries will meet to share and learn the latest energy technologies and look for new business opportunities.

A representative from KEPCO stated, "This year's slogan is 'Clean Energy, Green Power,' and we hope this will get more Koreans interested in technologies on electricity from attending the event. The event will help small and midsize Korean companies find opportunities to enter foreign markets by networking with foreign counterparts. We hope our event will become one of the most prestigious electricity exhibitions in the future."

KEPCO is highlighting the event for this on the developments in renewable energy. The Korea JoongAng Daily article stated, "Environmentally-friendly power generation has become a top agenda item for power companies around the world after 195 countries signed an accord in Paris at the end of last year to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius and review their carbon emissions targets every five years."

Bixpo got its namesake from Bitgaram, a new city developed near the Yeongsan River. It expands from Gwangju to Naju, and which KEPCO plans to make into the center of the local energy industry.

KEPCO also claims that it has built energy storage systems with the capacity to store a total of 252 megawatts. It also plans to add at least 124 megawatts to its capacity this year and in 2017, and improving the overall storage capacity in the system to 500 megawatts next year. Such capacity storage is enough to power 7,000 households that use 72 kilowatts a day.

"We will be able to save up to 320 billion won ($281.2 million) every year from now on with the 500 megawatts of energy storage system capacity," the representative added.