Gas cooling emerges as a means of curbing power peak.
The amount of electric power for cooling replaced by gas was 1.9 million kW in summer last year.
▲ A gas cooling equipment
As the electric power shortage is anticipated to develop into the worst situation in this summer due to suspended operation of several nuclear power reactors, gas cooling attracts attention as an efficient alternative.
According to Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS) and city gas companies, gas cooling can contribute to stabilizing demand and supply of electric power by using gas for cooling in summer and heating in winter instead of electric power.
Consumption of electric power for cooling reached 17.66 million kW in Korea last year, accounting for 23.7% of the maximum electric power in summer. The amount of electric power for cooling replaced by gas in summer last year was 1.9 million kW, which is equivalent to the maximum electric power generated by two nuclear power reactors.
A research conducted by Prof. Takaguchi Youjin at Waseda University in Japan found that gas heating pump (GHP)-based buildings consumed 33.4% less electric power in August and 25.7% less power annually than electric heating pump (EHP)-based buildings.
Energy consumption structure at homes and commercial businesses showed that consumption of city gas has been stagnant since 2007, while consumption of electric power soared.
In case of Japan whose climate and temperature are similar to Korea, demand for gas cooling was 23.3% in 2011 whereas it was 9.7% in 2012 in Korea.
Demand for cooling is expected to increase continuously, owing to improvement in standard of living and global warming.
A manager at KOGAS said, “Gas cooling and heating systems are establishing themselves as major systems for curbing electric power peak. Various advantages of gas cooling system and improved government support policy will increase its demand.”
Gas cooling is evaluated to be advantageous in efficiency, economic feasibility, stability and eco-friendliness.
The power efficiency in Korea is about 40%, but the efficiency drops to around 35% when power reserve margin and loss in transmitting and distributing power are taking into account. Korea needs to maintain certain level of power reserve margin because it is impossible to store power. Meanwhile, gas companies say that gas is much more efficient than power as it loses little energy and causes no loss in transport.
Gas provides higher economic efficiency as KOGAS set charges of natural gas for cooling at levels lower than material costs and applied charges for gas for heating in winter at the level smaller than gas for heating business buildings by 2.11 won/m³.
Individuals can use gas as they need any time since city gas is supplied through underground pipes, and especially they can use gas in stability even in emergency situation such as power crisis in summer.
Whereas electric power generates greenhouse gases as it uses Freon gas as refrigerant for cooling, absorption gas cooling system is eco-friendly as it uses water as refrigerant.
Perceiving necessity of gas cooling, the government is implementing a variety of policies, including payment of subsidies for installing gas cooling systems, mandatory installation of gas cooling systems at public organizations, inducement of large buildings to install gas cooling systems, and differentiated support of subsidies depending on efficiency of gas cooling equipments.
KOGAS is implementing the policy of providing incentives for gas cooling systems since 1996 and it is charging gas rates lower than material costs since 1997.
Since 2010, KOGAS has been providing subsidies and incentives using the government support, and it is currently supporting about 20% of costs for installing gas cooling equipments from the policy fund (electric power fund). During the first 5 months in this year, the amount of government subsidies applied for installing gas cooling systems reached 7.6 billion won.
Source : todayenergy
