신·재생에너지 활성화를 위한 전기소매사업자에 대한 법적과제 -일본의 사례를 중심으로-

At the New Year meeting with top officials, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced to relieve the regulations that control the entry to electricity market in order to foster new energy industries as one of measures for ‘creating new engines for economic growth.’ Retail electricity market becomes partly open, and consumers can also sell electricity to other consumers within a certain area. The Electric Power Exchange Guidelines and the Electric Utility Act will be revised, which will allow electric vehicle chargers and energy storage systems to resell electricity to the power market. To implement the deregulation of the electricity market, the Guideline for Exchange of the Small-scale New and Renewable Power was recently revised on February 29. Even with the exchange of a small amount of electricity, several processes such as the membership application to Korea Power Exchange and the contract with the Korea Power Electric Corporate (KEPCO) are required. The deregulation aims at fostering the relevant industries by reducing the increased costs for industries to comply with requirements. The generation sector detached from the vertically-integrated monopoly KEPCO due to the electric sector reform in 2001, and the KEPCO has been in charge of transmission, distribution and sales of electricity. Generation and investment in power plants are determined through competition among six KEPCO subsidiaries and privatized generation companies including energy subsidiaries of conglomerates (SK, GS, Posco, etc.) and small and medium-scale energy companies. Based on these circumstances, as this deregulation allows the participation of other entities to the electricity market, the changes in electric service industries and the accelerated emergence of new technologies and new industries are expected. Also, as electricity consumers’ options diversify, the existing patterns of electricity consumption are likely to change. The creation of new businesses can be expected through competition of the provided services. However, the legal issues related to electricity supply contract and a thoughtless rise in electric rates need to be discussed since it is warned that few operators with enough funds could monopolize small-scale distributed power within a certain area. Recently, compensation for the decreased electricity generation from small-scale solar panels due to a new building was determined. Therefore, the relevant guidelines need to be established to appropriately respond to these disputes. This study aims at suggesting legal recommendations for the retail electricity market opening, by examining the relevant judicial affairs in Japan where the retail electricity market has completely opened on April 1, 2016, and electricity consumers can choose and make a supply contract with an electric utility. A person or a prosumer can make a contract with electricity utilities to sell the generated electricity. Like the precedents observed in Japan, people are likely rather consign the trade to the commissioned traders. We also need to include the commissioned traders into ‘electricity sellers’ of our laws and respond to these changes by revising the relevant laws and guidelines. Prosumers’ contributions to the environment will be expanded according to increased exchanges of small-scale new and renewable power. However, as mentioned earlier, the relevant guidelines are required, focusing on legal systems and protection of electricity consumers to foster the compliance capacity for the stable power supply and stimulate prosumers.