The government will strengthen the evaluation system for new large-scale power demand to ease the concentration of data centers in the metropolitan area and encourage their relocation to local areas, and provide incentives such as facility burden fee discounts and partial exemption of reserve power rates when located outside the metropolitan area.

On the 9th, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy held a 'Data Center Regional Dispersion Meeting' with participation from the government, local governments, public and private sectors.

At the meeting held that day, measures to disperse electricity demand to ease the concentration of data centers in the metropolitan area were discussed, and opinions from relevant organizations and the industry were collected and a direction for promoting data center dispersion was derived.

First, the government plans to strictly evaluate the impact of new data centers on the grid in order to ease the concentration of data centers in the metropolitan area, and establish a system to postpone electricity supply for a certain period of time in cases where the grid ripple effect is large, excessive new investment is induced, or grid connection is difficult.

Through this, when large-scale power users negotiate energy use plans, they will be required to review KEPCO's electricity use notice, thereby strengthening the evaluation of the system and supply and demand aspects.

In particular, it was decided to introduce a system of grid impact assessment to evaluate the grid ripple effects of new data centers in grid-saturated areas such as the metropolitan area, prepare a plan to minimize negative ripple effects, and check and evaluate the status of plan implementation when enacting the 'Special Act on Activation of Distributed Energy'.all.

In addition, data centers located outside the metropolitan area will be considered for incentive support, such as discounts on facility costs for cables and switches when connected to the distribution network (22.9 kV) and partial exemption of reserve power charges when connected to the transmission network (154 kV).

The information provision scope of the power grid surplus information disclosure system launched last year has been specified from the city/county unit for the existing 345kV substation range to the town/township unit for the 154kV substation range, and in conjunction with this, dedicated consulting windows have been established for each of KEPCO's 15 regional headquarters to support the smooth local establishment of new data centers.

In addition, we will actively seek out candidate locations, such as areas where renewable energy output control and transmission restrictions occur, areas where power system infrastructure such as transmission networks and substations have been sufficiently secured in advance, and areas where waste energy such as LNG cold heat and water heat can be linked and utilized for data center cooling to reduce electricity use.

In order to encourage data center location in the region, we will also review and prepare a package of incentives, including financial and tax incentives, through collaboration with relevant ministries and local governments.

Meanwhile, 60% of the current data center locations and 70% of the electricity demand are concentrated in the metropolitan area, and when considering the demand for electricity usage notification applications, these ratios are expected to increase to 90% each by 2029, so the concentration phenomenon in the metropolitan area is expected to worsen further.

In particular, data centers are typical power-intensive facilities that operate servers, storage, and equipment in a consistent pattern throughout the year, and the power consumption of 142 data centers nationwide is similar to the power consumption of the entire contracted households in Gangnam-gu (195,000).

There are concerns that the concentration of data centers in the metropolitan area may have adverse effects in terms of data safety and security, power grid, and regional balanced development.

Disasters such as fires and earthquakes in the metropolitan areaThe occurrence of a disaster can cause data loss, Internet delays, etc., which can paralyze living and communication infrastructure.