Potentiality of renewable resources: Economic feasibility perspectives in South Korea

Since dependency on fossil fuels and nuclear energy has become a main global concern, the South Korean government has made significant efforts for the diffusion and vitalization of renewable energy generation facilities. One of the notable efforts for renewable energy is the government's and research institutes’ provision of natural resource maps. Although these maps are useful for the diffusion of renewable energy generation systems, the economic feasibility of these systems can be affected by various factors (e.g., cost of the components in the systems or the characteristics of national electricity demand). Therefore, the current study investigates the economic feasibility of renewable energy generation systems in 17 selected cities in South Korea using information on the currently considered components and the hybrid optimization of multiple energy resources (HOMER) software. Based on the simulation results, the optimal configurations for the cities are introduced, the potentiality of utilizing renewable energy resources in the cities evaluated, and the renewable energy resources ranked for each city. Among the suggested cities, Jeju and Incheon are nominated as two promising locations for utilizing renewable energy resources. Moreover, this study presents the general economic feasibility maps for South Korean cities, as well as discusses both implications and limitations.