President Cho Hwan-eik of Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) disclosed his company’s willingness to diversify his businesses, which now focus on electricity wholesaling, to new growth engines related to the advent of the 4th Industrial Revolution, including next-generation power management.
“Of late, KEPCO has posted better business performances thanks to such special situations as the proceeds accruing from the disposing of the site of KEPCO headquarters in Samseong-dong, Seoul, and low crude oil prices,” KEPCO President Cho said in a recent interview. “The outlook of the power whole-sale business (KEPCO) has so far involved is not rosy due to raw material and equipment price fluctuations and diverse outside environment changes and rising costs from conflicts,” he added. Global utility companies have seen capitalization and business performances decline, Cho said. He stressed that KEPCO will find breakthroughs, including next-generation power management related to the 4th Industrial Revolution.
President Cho said KEPCO will enter the big data profit-making business this year. KEPCO owns about 3 trillion big data points involving power transmission, transformation, and distribution and 6 trillion big data points, which are related to power trades.
KEPCO plans to venture into bid data and cloud platform businesses by processing the data that the company has so far thrown away. For instance, the company seeks to find new business models, including a business of selling power solutions, including one of producing maps of districts consuming larger power volumes compared to population.
President Cho said he was impressed when he saw “Hidden Figures,” an American biographical film based on African American female mathematicians, who had contributed to space exploration by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the 1960s. He emphasized the need for hiring hidden gifted manpower, saying that big entities like KEPCO should have had a corporate culture prodding individuals’ creativity.
Cho said KEPCO will participate in an international bid to acquire a British government project to build the Moorside Nuclear Power Station in northwestern U.K. He made the remarks at a meeting with reporters in Sejong City on March 21 after a regular meeting of KEPCO’s board of directors where he was officially reelected for another year for the second time after finishing his initial three-year term.
When Cho took office in December 2012, the power company posted a poor business performance, chalking up 11 trillion won in accumulative loses over five consecutive years. He will be at the helm of the nation’s largest public entity until February 2018, becoming the longest-ever serving CEO of KEPCO, with a term of five years and two months. Cho’s reelection is owed to his innovative leadership to overcome a crisis, industry analysts say. KEPCO plans to acquire a stake in NuGen, the consortium for the nuclear power project from Toshiba.
KEPCO wants to acquire a stake in NuGen from Toshiba, which is considering withdrawing from the nuclear power business due to snowballing losses. But Cho made it clear KEPCO has no interest in acquiring Westinghouse, a subsidiary of Toshiba.
NuGen is to build three AP1000 nuclear reactors for the Moorside Nuclear Power Station on a site near Sellafield, in Cumbria by 2025. The price tag is 15 billion pounds (about 21 trillion won). NuGen, a U.K. joint venture between Toshiba and ENGIE, has been working on the Nuclear Power Station since it was awarded the project from the British government. Toshiba has a 60 percent stake in NuGen.
If KEPCO succeeds in acquiring the British project, it will be the second time Korea would land an overseas nuclear power project, and eight years after the nation won its first order for a nuclear power project from the United Arab Emirates.
KEPCO Pursues Shared Growth with SMEs, Startups
KEPCO is accelerating efforts to create an energy ecosystem through shared growth with SMEs and startups.
KEPCO plans to max out exports of the Korean power industry by giving a helping hand to its cooperative SMEs and startups which want to explore overseas markets by making the most of KEPCO’s global standing. The company is spearheading efforts to create future growth engines with the goal of nurturing 300 energy startups by 2020.
To this end, last year, KEPCO inaugurated a department specializing in SMEs overseas market exploration.
