Korea Smart Grid Week Comes to Seoul for its Second Year

Korea Smart Grid Week, the nation’s first government-sponsored smart grid trade show, will move to Seoul for its second year in action. The event, a combined international conference and exhibition, will be hosted by Coex, Korea’s largest exhibition organizer.

This year, Korea Smart Grid Week will expand its Biz Fair, which has been renamed World Smart Grid Expo. Focus has shifted from domestic products to exhibiting leading smart grid technology from companies around the world. The World Smart Grid Expo aims to become one of the globe’s leading international smart grid exhibitions.

The 1st Korea Smart Grid Week was held November 8th-14th, 2010, at Phoenix Island Resort in Jeju, South Korea. The event consisted of the International Smart Grid Conference and the Smart Grid Biz Fair. The conference welcomed nearly 3,000 attendees, and the Smart Grid Biz Fair exhibited state-of-the-art products and technologies developed by leading Korean companies and renowned overseas businesses.

Jeju’s smart grid test bed is being built in partnership with Korean conglomerates KEPCO, LG, SK, KT/GS Caltex, POSCO, and Hyundai Heavy Industries, with the goal of testing the world’s finest smart grid technologies and discovering viable business models for smart grid deployment. At Jeju’s smart grid test bed, experts and other visitors from around the world can view smart grid prototypes firsthand. For many visitors, Jeju’s test bed is their first chance to interact directly with real grids.

The importance of the Jeju test bed echoes the importance of Korea as a whole in the world smart grid industry. The country’s government has invested nearly 60.7 million USD into building its smart grid test bed, and the President Lee Myung-Bak has initiated a five-year plan following the United Nations policy of Green Growth, of which South Korea is a leading advocate.

In hosting Korea Smart Grid Week in Seoul, the Expo secretariat hopes to bring the smart grid industry to a business center, thereby furthering the development opportunities first presented at the Jeju show last year.