Ex-ante evaluation of economic costs from power grid blackout in South Korea

Abstract

South Korea is recently under serious situation in supplying electricity with enough power reserve. A single fault of power plant at a peak-load time may lead to a total blackout for whole area connected by a single electric grid and isolated from other grids. Despite of the seriousness of blackout, however, there are scarce studies with ex-ante analysis of the economic costs from blackout. In order to evocate the seriousness, we calculate the economic costs for both industrial and household sectors with using some survey data and statistical methodologies. As a result, total economic costs are 39.23 trillion KRW (35.83 trillion KRW for industrial sector, 3.40 trillion KRW for household sector).