"KEPCO has no technology." I have occasionally heard such remarks.
This is likely because many people think of KEPCO as a company that sells electricity and manages utility poles and power lines. But electricity does not flow automatically just because you plug into an outlet. To deliver it without a single interruption to cities, factories, hospitals, and even semiconductor production lines, countless technologies must work together.
KEPCO's technology is not easily visible. But the power grid technology that connects the nation like blood vessels, the operating technology that prevents electricity from being blocked or overloaded, the diagnostic technology that detects warning signs before failures occur, and the fault detection technology that quickly locates blackout zones are all KEPCO's technology.
Of course, we were not skilled from the beginning. We depended on foreign technology for critical equipment, and even when failures occurred, we could not freely open and repair them. When overseas engineers installed and repaired equipment, our technical staff had to watch from a distance. It was like a student who wants to learn cooking watching only the chef's hand movements from outside the kitchen.
But there was no giving up. Based on the field experience accumulated while operating actual power equipment, KEPCO applied domestic materials and systems and continuously improved the problems revealed in the process. By developing technology to fit our power grid in this way, we were able to accumulate advanced technology across the entire power industry, including power transmission and transformation, distribution, and power information technology (IT).
Those achievements are being confirmed in the global market. We are transferring 765 kV ultra-high voltage transmission technology to a U.S. power company, and we exported SFL, an underground transmission line fault location technology, to the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in the United States. SEDA, which monitors abnormal signs in substation equipment, was also supplied to MR of Germany, the world's No. 1 company in transformer control and power grid stabilization. In the past, we borrowed advanced nations' toolboxes, but now engineers in advanced nations have begun to use the tools we made.
Behind Korea's 60 years of economic growth, there has always been electricity. When the machines in textile factories turned, when the furnaces in steel mills burned, and when petrochemical complexes, automobile plants, and semiconductor clean rooms operated through the night, electricity did not stop 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. Even with an energy import dependency of 94%, electricity was supplied at reasonable prices and the world's highest quality. And alongside it, there was always KEPCO's technology.
Now Korea's power technology is heading to the world. The export order backlog of the three major power equipment companies is approximately 30 trillion won. This is a scale equivalent to almost 10 years' worth of work. Now we must expand this success experience to the broader energy industry as a whole. This is because the next 60 years will be a time of even greater change.
That change is already upon us. As the fossil fuel era declines and we enter the period of a great energy transition, the way we use and produce electricity is rapidly changing. Accordingly, countless new technologies are pouring out. However, technology must not remain only in the laboratory. Only when technology that emerges from the laboratory is verified in the field, improved again, and grows into an industry does it become living technology.
As one of the solutions to this change, KEPCO is preparing a technology holding company. The technology holding company aims to connect KEPCO's experience and technology, which play a central role in the energy ecosystem, with the creativity of the private sector to grow a new technology ecosystem and expand its technological territory. If the past 60 years were a time of learning and catching up with advanced technology, the next 60 years will be a time when our technology overwhelms the world's power technology.
