earticle

영어

The cost to electricity is cheaper at night due to electric supply and demand policy in Korea. During daytime the loads are higher and extra generators are brought "on-line" to meet the demand. In the middle of night loads are lower and they need to throttle back the generators. So KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation) offers "time of use" (TOU) rates to balance the grid load. The night storage heaters are generally on a separate circuit which is only switched on when the night rate is activated. Since 2000 the price of NG, kerosene and other petroleum based fuel for heating has been increased rapidly and overtook the price of electricity at last, so more and more people have chosen night storage heaters to save energy price. Currently about 900,000 customers are using electric night heaters and this causes shift of peak demand time to night in winter and increase of deficit spending. To solve this problem, replacing electric night heater by air-source heat pump has been proposed. An air-source heat pump can provide efficient heating and cooling for building, especially in a warm climate. When properly installed, an air-source heat pump can deliver one-and-a-half to three times more heat energy to a building than the electrical energy it consumes. This is possible because a heat pump moves heat rather than converting it from a fuel, like in combustion heating systems.