YEONGGWANG — The scale of the offshore wind turbines rising from the waters off Nangwol-myeon in Yeonggwang County, South Jeolla Province (Jeonnam), was overwhelming when seen up close on the 30th. From the foundation driven into the seabed to the blade tips, each unit stands about 250 meters tall — roughly the height of Seoul's 63 Building, at 249 meters. A single blade measures 82.5 meters, and the three blades sweep a circle 165 meters across. Sixty-four of these generators are going up in the sea off Yeonggwang.
Construction is in its final stages. Of the 64 turbines rated at 5.7 megawatts each, 61 have been installed. The developer aims to begin full commercial operation in December after completing the remaining turbines and subsea cables and running trial operations. Forty-five of the installed turbines have already entered partial operation, generating electricity in phases ahead of completion.
Nangwol's startup coincides with a sharp rise in power demand in the Gwangju and Jeonnam region. Wind industry officials say the renewable energy expansion that the Lee Jae-myung administration is pursuing as a core policy priority, along with mega projects such as the Honam fab, are all closely tied to the success of offshore wind.
Power required for the Honam fab is estimated at 6.3 gigawatts for four production lines. Should additional investment follow, demand would grow exponentially. New nuclear plants take too long to build, and thermal generation using liquefied natural gas and other fuels has limits in meeting that demand.
That is why offshore wind is drawing attention as a central renewable source. A single complex like Nangwol cannot cover all the power needs of advanced industries, but if more wind farms of several hundred megawatts are built in the southwestern waters, the region's supply capacity will expand accordingly.
Another gain is that Korean companies have built competitiveness in the offshore wind business through the project. About 100 companies at home and abroad are taking part. POSCO and Hyundai Steel supply the steel for the monopile foundations, which GS Entec fabricates. Samil C&S makes the transition pieces connecting the upper and lower structures, while Taihan Cable & Solution handles subsea cable manufacturing and laying. CS Wind supplies the towers. Companies based in Jeonnam have participated in marine geotechnical surveys, port support work, electrical equipment and transmission tower construction, making the project a success for regional cooperation as well.
Challenges remain on the industrial front. Korean firms are competitive in towers, subsea cables and substructures, but they lag in turbines, the core equipment that determines output and project costs. Chinese manufacturers are pushing turbines of 18 megawatts and above and European makers 15-megawatt models, while Korean firms have relatively little experience installing and operating large turbines. That is why the government is pursuing the development and demonstration of domestic ultra-large turbines of 20 megawatts or more.
Sustaining large projects also matters for lowering generation costs. According to a government analysis, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark saw costs of 266 to 382 won per kilowatt-hour in the early stages of offshore wind deployment fall by about half after an average of 3 to 4 gigawatts had been installed. Repeated construction of wind farms built up experience in equipment production, construction and operation, and drew follow-on investment in ports, installation vessels and other infrastructure.
The government has set a target of cutting Korea's offshore wind generation cost, now in the 330-won range, to below 250 won by 2030 and below 150 won by 2035. To that end, it plans to raise the cumulative volume of completed and started capacity to 10.5 gigawatts by 2030 and to deploy more than 25 gigawatts by 2035.
Follow-up projects at home, however, have yet to gain speed. Shinan Woo-i, the project set to follow Nangwol, has pushed back its original completion target of September 2028 to commercial operation in January 2029. Once work at Nangwol ends, large-scale sites where turbines and blades are actually installed at sea will all but disappear through 2027, so further delays to follow-up projects could sever the experience and workforce the domestic supply chain has built with difficulty.
The problem is not only that follow-up projects are running late. Work could also pile up all at once in 2028 and 2029, when construction is expected in earnest. The government also sees a risk of bottlenecks at the start of construction, as the scheduled use of ports and installation vessels for previously awarded projects is concentrated in that period. Domestic ports and installation vessels still lack the capacity to handle large volumes simultaneously.
"Without construction, there is no track record, and without a track record it is hard for companies to invest," one project official said at the site. "In the end, you have to keep building complexes and creating volume for the supply chain to grow and for economies of scale to emerge."
