Korean District Heating: Pairing growth and quality

摘要

In 1994, 268,000 households in Korea used district heating service. Today, 1.17 million households use district heating, 685,000 (58 percent) of which are supplied by the Korean District Heating Corp. (By comparison there are approximately 1.1 million households in all of Chicago.) Founded in 1985, the company now 1. has 846 employees and 11 branch offices; 2. heats more than 727 million sq ft of building space; 3. operates and maintains approximately 1,330 miles of hot water piping; 4. uses hot water to operate absorption chillers at commercial buildings; and 5. has 11 plants with a heat production capacity of 3,465 MW/hr, which includes 1,484 MW/hr from combined heat and power plants owned by Korean Electric Power Corp., and 85 MW/hr from incinerators owned by several municipal governments.