At the "2026 Offshore Wind Supply Chain Conference," held Tuesday at the Yeosu Expo convention center in South Jeolla Province, one product gleaming in silvery white caught the eye among models of high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines displayed in one corner of the exhibition hall.
The global standard for conventional transmission lines has been to use copper, which offers superior conductivity. But this product made by Taihan Cable & Solution stands out for filling the cable with aluminum instead of expensive copper, sharply lowering the price. A Taihan official met at the exhibition stressed, "In the global market, the price of aluminum is about one-third that of copper, so the new product is ideal for targeting the European market, which is sensitive to project costs."
Taihan plans to build a new Dangjin No. 2 plant next year, specialized in manufacturing direct current (DC) transmission lines, to respond to surging overseas demand. The company will also erect a 187-meter vertical continuous vulcanization (VCV) tower, the tallest in the world, to produce transmission line bundles weighing 12,000 tons.
Unison, one of Korea's two leading wind turbine manufacturers alongside Doosan Enerbility, displayed at its booth a model of an actual 10-megawatt (MW) wind power plant scaled down by a ratio of 75 to 1. "About 30 percent of the wind power turbines installed in Korea so far have been supplied by Unison," a Unison official said. "The 10MW-class turbine we developed in-house over six years will be supplied to offshore wind power projects across the country going forward."
The government plans to steadily pursue larger turbines to lower the costs and raise the efficiency of offshore wind power projects. In line with this, Doosan Enerbility will produce 14MW large turbines domestically in partnership with Germany's Siemens Gamesa. Unison signed a license agreement with Germany's W2E (Wensys) to supply 13.6MW turbines to projects including the Yeosu Gwangpyeong (816MW) offshore wind project.
MSL Technology, a company specializing in the production of navigation aid systems, unveiled a system that attaches six types of marking systems to offshore structures and manages them in real time: optical signal beacons, acoustic signal beacons, lighthouse lamps, radar beacons, search lights, and identification panels. Even when the light of a lighthouse lamp is not spotted at night or in fog, the system uses sound waves, light waves, and radar to guide vessels so they do not collide with structures while sailing. It stands out for the addition of solar panels so it can operate safely without an external power supply. In addition, the company has built a management system that links with vessel automatic identification systems (AIS) to automatically send an alert to the manager when a vessel approaches within a certain distance of a structure.
Local governments, led by South Jeolla Province, also participated in large numbers at this event. Shinan County, which is at the forefront of the offshore wind business, is a representative example. According to Shinan County, the offshore wind projects being pursued within the county have a total installed capacity of 8.2 gigawatts (GW), equivalent to eight nuclear reactors. This means more power generation facilities will be built off the coast of Shinan County than at the nearby Hanbit Nuclear Power Site. Not stopping there, Shinan County plans to build a cluster complex capable of supplying 3.7GW of facilities annually to leap forward as an offshore wind hub, and to actively use a resident-participation profit-sharing model to accelerate the offshore wind business.
Kim Kang-hak, chairman of the Korea Wind Energy Industry Association, said, "If world-class shipbuilding and offshore plant technology is added to the favorable location of being surrounded by sea on three sides, offshore wind can become a new growth engine for manufacturing and a future industrial competitiveness for Korea."
