Jeju Smart Grid lacks street smarts?
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Jeju Smart Grid lacks street smarts?
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A Jeju Weekly investigation finds local test bed participants are having trouble using the system

Located in the northeast of Jeju Island, the town of Gujwa-eup has been home to the Jeju Smart Grid Test Bed since the beginning of the national project in December 2009. In an area of 185 km2 that includes both agrarian and fishing villages, Gujwa-eup was divided into four quadrants that were then given to companies to experiment with their technologies.

The first phase of this massive 240 billion won project commenced in 2009 with the building of the Smart Grid’s “infrastructure for demonstration,” according to Kim Yong-Jin, the Senior Manager of the Smart Grid Information Center (SGIC). This was completed in May 2011. The second phase has now begun, which is to test and demonstrate the grid and prepare the technology for national and international export.

Kim described the citizens of Gujwa-eup who are currently using Smart Grid technology as being older, and says that “they lack understanding of the Smart Grid system.” According to the 2010 Jeju Statistical Yearbook, 44 percent of Gujwa-eup (3,282 residents) are over the age of 65. He said they have been trying to educate them through meetings, presentations, conferences and forums.

Once leaving the SGIC, located in Haengwonli (a subsection of Gujwa-eup), we ventured into the scorching heat looking for homes with solar panels. The houses in Haengwonli are small and grouped in clusters around a courtyard. They are old, somewhat in disarray, and none of them had solar panels. We asked several people in the streets about the Smart Grid. They replied that they did not know anything about it. Eventually, a middle-aged woman, Kang Seung Mi, told us that her house was connected but didn’t really understand how or what it did for her.

“You should talk to the village chief. If you meet him, he will explain it to you,” she said.

When we arrived at the village office the chief was out, but office manager Kim Sun Ja was more than willing to answer our questions. She went into another room and brought back with her a small electrical box and a bunch of wires.

“This is something that KEPCO [Korea Electronic Power Corporation] installed and said it would let us know the electronic bills in real time,” said Kim Sun Ja. “However, the promotion wasn’t good enough for our villagers. And they also said if it’s on too long then it would overheat, so I just pulled it off.”

There are five sections to the Smart Grid Test Bed, and in Haengwonli KEPCO is overseeing the village’s installation of a Smart Electricity service, which according to the Jeju Smart Grid Test Bed’s Web site will allow for “a real-time pricing system,” and a “power trading system for online costumers.”
She continued that her village has had no “direct benefit” from either being home to SGIC or from the KEPCO system.

“In the next village Woljeong,” Kim Sun Ja said, “they have the solar panels.”

In Woljeong, the houses are mostly larger than in Haengwonli, and have roof terraces. It did not take long to find some with solar panels.

“They gave us priority because we had a rooftop,” said 74-year-old Hyun Bong Rye. “…Before this, I had to pay 80,000 to 85,000 won per month for electricity but after installing this, I pay 12,000 to 13,000 won per month. We sell the left over electricity to KEPCO.”

This village is testing the Smart Power Grid and the Smart Electricity systems, and the company in charge is SK Telecom.

We asked to see her Smart Meter. She replied that she did not know if she had one or what it was.

Next we spoke with 72-year-old Kang Myung Hwa, who claims to be the first person in her village to have the solar panels installed. She said that her electricity bill has dropped from 30,000 won a month to roughly 3,000 won.

We asked to see her Smart Meter, and she showed us a rectangular LCD touch screen, very different to what Kim Sun Ja showed us. “Do you mean this?” said Kang Myung Hwa. “They say I can know how much electricity bills will cost in real time, but I don’t know how to use it.”

She then took us to the roof and proudly showed off her solar panel. It was installed about a year ago, and she said that KEPCO had recently attached a thick wire to the solar panel so unused solar-generated electricity could be bought by the company. “I don’t know if they will give me money for the leftovers,” she said. “I wonder if they will take the money from us because we are old.”

Neither Kim Young-Jin of the SGIC or the villages’ overseeing companies could tell us how many homes in the specific villages were connect to the grid, only that 6,000 homes in Gujwa-eup are connected in some form or another. Only the village chief of Woljeong said that their village had 10 units fitted with solar panels. He also refuted the claim by many Woljeong residents that there is to be a second lottery for solar panels. According to him, this is not true.

We asked Kim Young-Jin if the SGIC has ever received any complaints about Smart Meters overheating, to which he replied that the center had not.

In a telephone interview with Kim Sun Ja, she said she knew that the Smart Meter displays both the Smart Grid’s electricity cost beside the traditional billing system. The consumer would pay the cheaper of the two. “But the gap between the two costs is too small. We don’t have young people around here so we don’t use electricity that much anyway.”

She also said her office has not received a complaint about the Smart Meters overheating, but “that’s because we don’t know about it. Just yesterday, I asked the chief ‘Do you know what that is?’ [Referring to the Smart Meter] and he answered ‘No, it was there when I got home.’”

She said no one else in Haengwonli other than her knows anything about the Smart Grid, even though it is the home of the SGIC and museum. She’s not gotten rid of the meter just in case KEPCO may want it back.

“I really don’t think this KEPCO business fits for this village,” she said.

(Interpretation by Baek Hee Youn)  <Jeju Weekly>

<Darryl Coote & Baek Hee Youn  darrylcoote@jejuweekly.com ⓒ Jeju Weekly All rights reserved>


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