LS Cable & System has signed a 108.6 billion won contract with Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) to supply HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) cables, the company made an official notice on Dec. 23.
The project is aimed at connecting 35 kilometers between Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, and a power plant on the west coast of South Chungcheong Province through the HVDC cable to provide power to the industrial park in the Seoul metropolitan area in a stable manner.
It can send 3GW of electricity, the power generation of three nuclear power plants, on the HVDC track. It is the world's largest power transmission capacity among HVDC cables, which is 4.5 times larger than conventional HVAC (High Voltage Alternative Current) cables.
For more than 100 years when electricity was used, most of the world's electricity networks have been made up of alternating current. However, the recent advantages of direct current are highlighted by low transmission losses, and HVDC is rapidly being applied around long-distance transmission networks.
The HVDC project in South Korea marks the fourth time since the first European cable was introduced between Haenam-Jeju in 1997. At that time, LS Cable won all orders for second to fourth projects before the cable was developed in Korea.
"Korea is leading global next-generation power projects such as HVDC and superconducting cables thanks to KEPCO’s energy efficiency project," said CEO Myung Noh-hyun of LS Cable & System.
Only five companies globally have HVDC cable technology, including LS Cable and those in Europe and Japan. Not many companies have both technical and construction capabilities because it is an early stage of commercialization.
LS Cable succeeded in developing the technology in 2012, catching up with the technology gap of more than 30 years with advanced companies. Since then, it has been leading industries such as world’s first public certification in 2018 and contracts to supply tracks with maximum transmission capacity.
