Feasibility Assessment of Using Power Plant Waste Heat in Large Scale Horticulture Facility Energy Supply Systems

Recently, the Korean government has been carrying out projects to construct several large scale horticulture facilities. However, it is difficult for an energy supply to operate stably and economically with only a conventional fossil fuel boiler system. For this reason, several unused energy sources have become attractive and it was found that power plant waste heat has the greatest potential for application in this scenario. In this study, we performed a feasibility assessment of power plant waste heat as an energy source for horticulture facilities. As a result, it was confirmed that there was a sufficient amount of energy potential for the use of waste heat to supply energy to the assumed area. In Dangjin, an horticultural area of 500 ha could be constructed by utilizing 20% of the energy reserves. In Hadong, a horticulture facility can be set up to be 260 ha with 7.4% of the energy reserves. In Youngdong, an assumed area of 65 ha could be built utilizing about 19% of the energy reserves. Furthermore, the payback period was calculated in order to evaluate the economic feasibility compared with a conventional system. The initial investment costs can be recovered by the approximately 83% reduction in the annual operating costs.