Doosan announced on June 22nd that it had signed dual contracts with Korea Western Power Co. for the power block installation and plant construction work required at the Gimpo CHP plant.* The contracts are valued to be about 360 billion won in total. Doosan recently won these contracts following after the gas turbine supplier agreement that it had signed with Korea Western Power Co. in December of last year.
* A Combined Heat & Power(CHP) plant is a power plant that is equipped with both electricity generating facilities and heat transmitting systems that are used for district heating. The Gimpo CHP Plant uses the gas turbine to initially produce electricity and then, the waste heat is used to activate the steam turbine to once more produce and supply electricity and thermal energy.
The power block refers to the electricity generating section and is comprised of the power plant’s main components, such as the turbine and generator. The power block contract that Doosan won is valued to be about 230 billion won and involves Doosan supplying and installing the components that form a power block, such as the steam turbine, generator and heat recovery steam generator (HRSG). The contract for the plant construction work, which involves installing components like the transmission lines and industrial water treatment systems for the power plant, is valued to be approximately 130 billion won.
The Gimpo CHP Plant, which is located in Gimpo’s Yangchon-eup in the Gyeonggi Province, is scheduled to be built by the first half of 2023. The 500MW LNG-based power plant will be supplying necessary heat and electricity to the nearby regions. Doosan will essentially be deploying Korea’s first locally manufactured gas turbine, which it started developing since 2013 as a government-backed project and for which final assembly was completed last September.
“According to the recently released 9th Basic Plan for Electricity Supply & Demand, it is forecast that Korea’s natural gas market will grow explosively from the current market size of 41.3GW in 2020 to 60.6GW by 2034” said Hongook Park, CEO of Doosan Heavy’s Power Service Business Group. He added, “Given that a huge market growth is expected, we aim to further promote our company’s growth by leveraging our industry-academia-research alliances to effectively develop a top-notch Korean standard gas-fired combined cycle power plant model.”
Doosan is a member of the “Task Force for Development of Korean Standard Gas-Fired Combined Cycle Power Plant,” which was launched by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy last February. The task force is composed of players from both the private and public sectors, including companies from Korea’s gas turbine industry, such as Sung-il Turbine P&S and Korea LostWax, Korea’s high-ranking universities, such as Seoul National University, Yonsei University and Inha University, five companies from the power generation sector, as well as the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (KETEP). As the task force aims at innovating the LNG-based power generation sector, the task force is working on developing a standard LNG-fired combined cycle power plant, devising plans to ensure the supply of such power facilities and seeking to promote the growth of Korea’s gas turbine industry.