South Korea Feed in Tariff - Feed-in Tariffs

South Korea's solar feed in tariff was cut in October 2008, resulting in only 10 MW between October 2008 and March 2009 being installed in the entire country. There is also a 500MW cap on he market which doesn't really help the situation much. One blatant mistake in the South Korean policy is that the government opted to absorb the increased cost of installed PV and take it out of the budget rather than spreading the cost over consumers, who would barely feel the impact (a couple bucks per month). The beautiful thing about the South Korean market is that they get plenty of sunlight. Calculations show that, at the right price, solar installations are profitable. And investors are eager to jump on the bandwagon, but the cap on the market is holding them back. Protectionist market caps such as these are meant to slow the market growth until Korean manufacturers are able to meet the demand, since it is far cheaper for them to produce modules rather than importing them from Europe. Bad news for Europe, good news for Korea.

South Korea gets a thumbs up for potential, but the other thumb down for not playing nice with others. Korea is a huge manufacturing sector exporter - Playing fair would mean that they import some things as well.

But, it seems they want to have their cake and eat it too.

South Korea
20 year feed in tariff		500 MW cap
<30 kWp	571.95 KRW
30 kWp<200 kWp	545.95 KRW
200 kWp<1 MWp	536.04 KRW
>1 MWp	509.24 KRW