Geothermal Development in Korea: Country Update 2005-2009

Abstract

There is no geothermal power generation in Korea due to absence of high temperature resources. It is not until early 2000’s either that direct-use geothermal development has become active except hot springs which are related with deep fractures in granite area and thus quite localized. Currently, however, direct-use geothermal development is getting more active in both exploration and in utilization especially in geothermal heat pump installation. Installed capacity exceeds 200 MWt and annual usage approached 2,000 TJ in 2009, which is mainly from geothermal heat pump. A small scale district heating started its operation in 2008 and the system is also connected to a greenhouse.
Geothermal R&D is quite active thanks to strong government support to renewable energy RD&D program. By the end of 2008, more than 2,000 rock samples were collected throughout the territory, of which physical properties including thermal conductivity were measured and compiled into GIS database. The database also includes surface temperature, geothermal gradient and heat flow distribution and is ready to open to public for the purpose of providing design parameters for borehole heat exchanger system. Geothermal resource assessment became available with the database through a volumetric method and heat content down to 5 km depth is estimated to be around 100,000 EJ corresponding to 10,000 times the total primary energy consumption in 2006.