Archive for the ‘Solar’ Category

Power and water supply in North Korea worsens in winter

Monday, February 19th, 2018

Institute for Far Easter Studies (IFES)

Reportedly, North Korea’s electricity and water supply have sharply deteriorated since mid-January this year.

According to a Seoul-Pyongyang News report on February 8, a Chinese resident in Sinuiju, North Pyongan Province, who is currently visiting China, told Radio Free Asia that the supply of electricity in North Korea began to deteriorate in January and that since the middle of the month the water supply was completely suspended due to the lack of power.

“Even if electricity is not supplied, lighting is possible with solar power, but the problem is that there is no supply of tap water,” the same source said. “People living in high-rise apartments are suffering more than those living in conventional houses,” he added.

People can draw ground water from the well. However, since elevators in high-rise apartments are not functioning due to the power shortage, those residents must carry water on their back while climbing several flights of the stairs.

Until last year, people could buy bottled water that North Korean truck drivers smuggled in from China. But this year even that has become difficult due to the international sanctions. It is said to be difficult to find such bottled water in North Korea ever since the Chinese customs authorities placed a complete ban on smuggling of all goods by truck drivers crossing the border.

In the meantime, even Pyongyang, which often has the best supply of electricity, is said to have faced a substantial cut in power supply in January.

A Chinese resident in Pyongyang who has recently visited China claimed that “except for the central districts in Pyongyang, power is supplied only for two or three hours a day, yet the worst problem is that water supply is suspended as well due to the deteriorating energy conditions.”

“Even if electricity is not supplied, people can cope with many problems using sunlight [solar power], but there is not much they can do to solve the shortage of water for drinking, toilets, and other daily uses. All family members have to focus on resolving the water shortage,” the source added.

Although there are some differences depending on the region, another North Korean source says that in recent months Pyongyang has suffered from more than ten power failures a day.

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Uptick in North Korea’s Renewable Energy Production

Thursday, November 17th, 2016

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)

In North Korea, there are now three solar-powered ferries that sail the Taedong River: the Okryu 1, the Okryu 2, and the Okryu 3.

The North Korean government’s wire service, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), reported on November 4, 2016: “The ferries sail between Kim Il Sung Square and the Tower of the Juche Idea, guaranteeing that citizens can travel during the rush hour. . . . These solar powered-ferries provide ferry services both to workers and for guests from home and abroad in the form of tourist and chartered services.”

According to KCNA, the three ferries were built at Ryongnam Shipyard, each weigh 45 tons, have a maximum speed of 6 knots, and can take up to 50–60 passengers.

According to Yun Hyok, the captain of Okryu 1, “the ferry is powered by the energy of sun light . . . the driving system was created with the energy and skill of our engineers. The ship can run for around 8 hours when fully charged.”

Since the 1990s, North Korea has expressed determination to achieve energy independence, with Kim Jong Un pointing to resolving electricity difficulties as being a priority back in 2011. Subsequently, in 2013, a law was introduced to encourage research and the production of renewable energy, and at this year’s Seventh Party Congress it was announced that two hydropower stations had been opened. The importance of energy independence was also emphasized at the congress. It has also been confirmed that North Korea has been pursuing a long-term plan to raise the amount of energy produced from renewable sources to 5 million kW. In order to achieve this target, the plan envisages by 2044 that wind power will provide 15 percent of total energy demand.

This plan was discovered through internal materials on display at the Natural Energy Research Centre, formed in November 2014 as a result of an order issued by Kim Jong Un to develop energy resources that do not pollute the environment.

An overseas visitor to the Natural Energy Research Centre said that “the Centre in Pyongyang has a diagram of the 30-year plan to develop renewable energy with the title ‘The dream and ideal of Natural Energy Science development’. . . . The materials there also indicate plans to train specialists in the science of ‘natural energy’ development, and plans related to the development and trial sites for wind power, geothermal energy, and solar thermal energy.”

Such plans mean that North Korea plans to develop renewable energy, in addition to building hydroelectric power plants and/or using Chinese/Russian power to deal with energy shortages. In other words, they intend to attempt to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels and develop renewable energy. Since Kim Jong Un’s rise to power, a variety of measures have been put in place and investments made to broaden the use of renewable energy.

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DPRK looks to boost energy supply

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015

According to the Associated Press:

North Korea is racing to boost its electricity supply by up to 50 percent with the completion of several generating stations by the end of the year and is pushing alternative resources like solar — already used extensively in the countryside — to ease its chronic shortages, a government expert told the Associated Press in Pyongyang.

In an unusually high-profile campaign, the North has mobilized legions of shock brigades to complete two large hydropower projects by Oct. 10. As is common with major North Korean construction efforts, the deadline is a date of national significance: the 70th anniversary of its ruling party.

Officials hope a noticeable increase will provide tangible proof that the party is working to improve the impoverished and heavily sanctioned nation’s standard of living. Kim Kyong Il, a senior researcher at Pyongyang’s Academy of Social Sciences, said the goal is a 20 to 50 percent increase in power compared with the 2014 level.

How effective its latest ‘‘speed campaign’’ will be is an open question.

Even achieving its target would leave North Korea with a small fraction of what it needs to fuel a vibrant economy or even meet some basic needs of its population. Experts stress the North needs more than just new power stations — it must improve its infrastructure to get the electricity where it is needed, secure spare parts and conduct sustained maintenance to keep the plants themselves going.

Supplying its industries and 24 million citizens with even a bare minimum of electricity has long been one of North Korea’s biggest problems, particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. Since then, the international community has offered to help the North expand its power grid, if it agrees to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, but to no avail.

North Korea’s total, nationwide electricity output is believed to be about 15 terawatt hours per year, give or take 10 or 20 percent. That would only be about enough to power Seoul, the South Korean capital of 10 million, for less than four months.

It’s been estimated — though never confirmed by Pyongyang — that about one-fifth of North Korea’s electricity is diverted to its 1 million-person military. Moreover, a disproportionate amount of the nation’s power is used to light up Pyongyang, where less than one-tenth of the population resides.

Kim, the government expert, said the North is shifting its focus in line with leader Kim Jong Un’s promise to improve the lives of the North Korean people and invigorate its economy.

He said North Korea is exploring wind and tidal power sources and added that solar already provides as much as half of the electricity in some rural areas. Small solar panels, seen by outside experts as a grassroots coping mechanism where state-provided energy is woefully lacking, are a common sight on apartment balconies and some countryside farms.

‘‘Our country regards electricity as the engine of the national economy, so the state is increasing investment in this field,’’ he said. He added that a major portion of the 2015 national budget that didn’t go to defense has been earmarked for investment in the power sector, though he refused to give precise figures.

Kim said two major projects — Mount Paektu Songun Youth Power Station units No. 1 and No. 2 and Huichon Power Station units 5, 8, 9 and 10 along the Chongchon River — are expected to be completed in time for the anniversary. The hydropower station on Mount Paektu, near the Chinese border, was started under Kim Jong Un’s father, the late Kim Jong Il, but had been plagued by delays.

State media in the North, officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, have portrayed the race to complete the megaprojects as a heroic demonstration of national will.

‘‘The young people of the DPRK have gone through thick and thin in hearty response to the call of the party to flatten even mountains, empty seas and conquer space,’’ the ruling party’s newspaper said in a recent editorial. ‘‘Now is the time for them to powerfully demonstrate their courage, unity and fighting capability before the world.’’

But Kim acknowledged it’s hard to predict how much power the units will actually produce.

‘‘If the power stations now under construction are completed, tens of thousands of kilowatts will be generated,’’ he said. ‘‘But this is only the capacity of the power stations. Actual output differs, so we will have to wait and see how much it comes out to.’’

Kim said North Korea relies on hydropower for 60 percent of its power grid, and on coal-fired thermal power for most of the rest. Both are vulnerable: hydropower to droughts and freezing, coal to supply and quality problems.

Kim said a ‘‘once in a century’’ drought last year caused a 10 percent drop in the output of hydropower stations, which he said was largely offset by increased coal power output. Not surprisingly, rural areas, which are low on the priority list for energy allocations, except at rice harvest time, were hardest hit by shortages.

David von Hippel, senior associate with the Nautilus Institute think tank, which has done extensive research on North Korea’s energy situation, said he doesn’t believe the 20-50 percent boost is plausible.

He said the additional electricity from the plants could be ‘‘potentially very significant to the surrounding area, or to whatever area of electricity demand the plant is connected to,’’ but not very significant on the national scale.

Still, he added, assessing the North’s capacities, and even its needs, is complicated because Pyongyang makes so little information public. North Koreans also long ago adjusted their lifestyles to the realities of scarcity — for example, by not buying appliances or equipment that require electricity.

‘‘The country has lived under a shortfall for so many years that it’s difficult to know what demand would be if there were enough power,’’ he said.

I also wrote an article in 38 North on a new coal power plant being constructed in Kangdong County.

Read the full story here:
North Korea in rush to boost electricity supply
Associated Press
Eric Talmadge
2015-6-3

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Solar panel boom in North Korea

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2015

solar-equipment-center-2014-9-21

Pictured Above: Solar Equipment Center in Pyongyang

According to Reuters:

In a country notorious for a lack of electricity, many North Koreans are taking power into their hands by installing cheap household solar panels to charge mobile phones and light up their homes.

Apartment blocks in Pyongyang and other cities are increasingly adorned with the panels, hung from balconies and windows, according to recent visitors to the isolated country and photographs obtained by Reuters.

“There must be at least a threefold increase in solar panels compared to last year,” Simon Cockerell, who visits North Korea regularly as general manager of Beijing-based Koryo Tours, told Reuters from Pyongyang. “Some are domestically made, so that may have driven prices down.”

North Korea has long suffered from electricity shortages which plunge large parts of the country into darkness, providing a stark contrast in night-time photos taken from space to prosperous and power-thirsty South Korea.

The soaring sales of cheap and easily-installed solar panels reflect rising demand for electricity in North Korea as incomes rise and people buy electronic goods like mobile phones and the “notel” media player that need regular charging. North Korea, one of the poorest countries in the world, is home to 2.5 million mobile phone users, about 10 percent of the population.

Once reserved for Workers’ Party cadres, solar panels and voltage stabilisers are now sold openly both in markets and the hardware section of Pyongyang department stores, where small 20 watt panels cost just under 350,000 won – $44 at the widely-used black market exchange rate where a dollar is about 8,000 won, instead of the official 96 won.

Obtaining accurate data from North Korea is difficult, but roughly 10-15 percent of urban apartments in a series of recent photographs in North Korean cities obtained by Reuters appeared to have small solar panels attached to windows or balconies.

Whether that number translates nationally is unclear, but regular visitors have noted a significant increase in solar panel use across the country in recent months, either in urban areas or in one case in the backyard vegetable plot of a rural house.

MONEY IS POWER

Private solar panels are not illegal in authoritarian North Korea, where in recent years the government has tacitly allowed greater economic freedoms. However, some local authorities may demand a bribe for permission to install them, a defector said.

Electricity supply in North Korea is prioritised for factories or areas of political importance, but those with money or connections are often able to tap those lines illegally.

The country could be generating about 33 terawatt-hours of electricity a year, or just 7 percent of what South Korea generates, according to Tristan Webb, a former British Foreign Office analyst who visited North Korean power plants in 2013.

North Korea suffers from dry winters where Siberian winds can keep temperatures below freezing for months. The state exports much of its mined coal and relies heavily on hydro power, meaning electricity is in especially short supply in winter.

“We can heat our homes with a heater powered by a solar panel,” said Kim Yeong-mi, a North Korean defector who came to the South in 2012.

Pyongyang is home to a solar panel factory, and state propaganda has said the technology is in “effective use” in solar-powered lamp posts in other cities. North Korea is trying to use renewable energy to “make up the shortage of electricity,” state media said on Tuesday.

“Develop and make effective use of wind, tidal, geothermal and solar energy!,” was one of a barrage of slogans released by the ruling party in February.

A typical solar power set-up includes a panel, battery, and inverter for charging phones or powering appliances. Private car ownership remains rare in North Korea, but car batteries are popular in households to store power for blackouts.

In the Chinese city of Dandong on the frontier with North Korea, large red signs outside shops advertise solar panel and battery kits, aimed at traders from across the border. At one shop, the largest set-up on sale produces enough power to run a TV, laptop, mobile phone, fridge, washing machine, rice cooker and even an electric blanket – all increasingly common household goods for moneyed North Koreans.

“North Koreans didn’t really buy solar panels from us until two years ago,” said Yang Yanmeng, a trader in China’s Shandong province who has been selling solar panels since 2012.

“Now, up to 80-90 percent of our company’s products are sold to North Koreans,” he told Reuters by phone.

Read the full story here:
In North Korea, solar panel boom gives power to the people
Reuters
James Pearson
2015-4-22

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Kwangmyong LED Lamp and Solar Battery Factory

Thursday, September 25th, 2014

Kwangmyong-Solar-Cell-Factory

Pictured Above (Pyongyang Times): The Kwangmyong LED Lamp and Solar Battery Factory

Below are several stories about the factory in the North Korean media:

Pyongyang Times (2014-12-6):

Kwangmyong LED and solar cell factory

The was built last year as a reflection of fierce competition for technology-intensive economy and green architecture in the DPRK.

It is equipped with a full set of latest facilities for the production of LED lamps and solar cells, in which development, production and sales of products are integrated to meet the requirements of the knowledge economy age.

The LED lamp production process, in which temperature and humidity are regulated automatically and which is dust free, is streamlined from the manufacture of LED light source to assembling and trial run, and intelligent equipment guarantee perfect quality of products.

All the factory products conform to international standards and they are many and varied. They include circular, flat, concave, mobile, concentrating lamps of 1 to 5W and 200W large-capacity module LEDs and LED floodlight, ornamental lamps for walls, gardens and tunnels, sensor and functional LED lamps of various styles and shapes. In a word, it can produce a variety of products on an assembly line.

The factory products are on sale through the exhibition in the compound and the commercial network across the country and it can get immediate feedback on its work from the purchasers.

The factory’s institute staffed with dozens of promising researchers and technicians is playing the leading part in closely combining the development of new products with production. They are now working on the development of new chips, LED and LED lamps, chip materials and solar cells. In particular, they have made notable achievements in solving technological problems for the production of all kinds of components of LED lamp with local raw and other materials and technology.

The solar cell workshop is stepping up the development of 3-G solar cell.

The building of the factory is a green one, as befits a producer of energy-saving products.

The photovoltaic collector panels, wind-driven generators and solar water heaters on both sides of the road to the entrance of the factory, in the compound and on the roof provide enough electricity for the lighting of the factory and hot water for the factory canteen and bathroom. And the geotherm that comes through the advanced geothermal facilities constantly provides favourble temperature for the people’s life by radiating heat in winter and absorbing it in summer.

The factory will be greatly helpful to the development of lighting industry, as it embodies the requirements of knowledge economy in both content and style.

KCNA (2014-6-23):

Kwangmyong LED Lamp and Solar Battery Factory

Pyongyang, June 23 (KCNA) — The Kwangmyong LED Lamp and Solar Battery Factory, built in the outskirts of Pyongyang, has begun operation.

The factory is all powered by wind, solar heat and geotherm. It is also perfect from the architectural and formative points of view.

It has several computerized assembly lines with an integral system of research, production, technical service and sale.

It is producing scores of kinds of LED lamps in accordance with the standards recommended by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

The institute of the factory is paying its primary attention to manufacturing all its products with locally available materials, while channeling efforts to the development of third-generation solar battery.

KCNA (2014-9-25):

Functional LED Lamps Developed

The Kwangmyong LED Lamp and Solar Battery Factory in the DPRK has recently developed diverse functional LED lamps effective for the production of livestock and vegetable.

They include lamps that help promote egg-laying and plant growth.

The egg-laying promotion lamp emits yellowish red light, with consumption of 18W electricity and wavelength of 590-600㎛. Its introduction made it possible for the Mangyongdae Chicken Farm to raise the egg output 3-4 percent.

The LED lamp for promoting the plant growth uses 9W of electricity, emitting blue light with 420-460㎛ in wavelength.

There is also a kind of LED lamp for fishing.

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An Updated Summary of Energy Supply and Demand in the Democratic People’s Republic Of Korea (DPRK)

Tuesday, April 15th, 2014

The Nautilus Institute has published a report on energy supply in the DPRK by David F. von Hippel and Peter Hayes. You can read it here.

Here is a small section of the paper:

Overall energy use per capita in the DPRK as of 1990 was relatively high, primarily due to inefficient use of fuels and reliance on coal. Coal is more difficult to use with high efficiency than oil products or gas. Based on our estimates, primary commercial energy[19] use in the DPRK in 1990 was approximately 70 GJ per capita, approximately three times the per capita commercial energy use in China in 1990, and somewhat over 50 percent of the 1990 per capita energy consumption in Japan (where 1990 GDP per-capita was some ten to twenty times higher than the DPRK). This sub-section provides a brief sketch of the DPRK energy sector, and some of its problems. Much more detailed reviews/estimates of energy demand and supply in the DPRK in 1990, 1996, and particularly in 2000, 2005, and 2008 through 2010, are provided in later chapters of this report.

The industrial sector is the largest consumer of all commercial fuels—particularly coal—in the DPRK. The transport sector consumes a substantial fraction of the oil products used in the country. Most transport energy use is for freight transport; the use of personal transport in the DPRK is very limited. The residential sector is a large user of coal and (in rural areas, though more recently, reportedly, in urban and peri-urban areas as well) biomass fuels. The military sector (by our estimates) consumes an important share of the refined oil products used in the country. The public/commercial and services sectors in the DPRK consume much smaller shares of fuels supplies in the DPRK than they do in industrialized countries, due primarily to the minimal development of the commercial sector in North Korea. Wood and crop wastes are used as fuels in the agricultural sector, and probably in some industrial subsectors as well.

Key energy-sector problems in the DPRK include:

*Inefficient and/or decaying infrastructure: Much of the energy-using infrastructure in the DPRK is reportedly (and visibly, to visitors to the country) antiquated and/or poorly maintained. Buildings apparently lack significant, and often any, insulation, and the heating circuits in residential and other buildings for the most part apparently cannot be controlled by residents. Industrial facilities are likewise either aging or based on outdated technology, and often (particularly in recent years) are operated at less-than-optimal capacities (from an energy-efficiency point of view).

*Suppressed and latent demand for energy services: Lack of fuels in many sectors of the DPRK economy has apparently caused demand for energy services to go unmet. Electricity outages are one obvious source of unmet demand, but there are also reports, for example, that portions of the DPRK fishing fleet have been idled for lack of diesel fuel. Residential heating is reportedly restricted in the winter (and some observers report that some public-sector and residential buildings have not received heat at all in recent years) to conserve fuel, resulting in uncomfortably cool inside temperatures.

The problem posed by suppressed and latent demand for energy services is that when and if supply constraints are removed there is likely to be a surge in energy (probably particularly electricity) use, as residents, industries, and other consumers of fuels increase their use of energy services toward desired levels. (This is a further argument, as elaborated later in this report, for making every effort to improve the efficiency of energy use in all sectors of the DPRK economy as restraints on energy supplies are reduced.)

*Lack of energy product markets: Compounding the risk of a surge in the use of energy services is the virtual lack of energy product markets in the DPRK. Without fuel pricing reforms, there will be few incentives for households and other energy users to adopt energy efficiency measures or otherwise control their fuels consumption. Recent years have seen limited attempts by the DPRK government to reform markets for energy products. Some private markets exist for local products like firewood, and some commercial fuels have in recent years reportedly been traded “unofficially” (on the black market), but for the most part, energy commodity markets in the DPRK essentially do not exist[20]. Energy consumers are also unlikely, without a massive and well-coordinated program of education about energy use and energy efficiency, to have the technical know-how to choose and make good use of energy efficiency technologies, even when and if such technologies are made available.

The DPRK’s energy sector needs are vast, and at the same time, as indicated by the only partial listing of problems many of these needs are sufficiently interconnected as to be particularly daunting to address. The DPRK’s energy sector needs include rebuilding/replacement of many of its power generation and almost all of its substation equipment, repair, replacement, and/or improvement of coal mine production equipment and safety systems, updating of oil refineries, improvement or replacement of most if its energy-using equipment, including coal-fired boilers, electric motors and drives, transport systems, and many other items, modernization of energy use throughout the country, rebuilding of the DPRK forest stocks, and a host of other needs. As one example of the interrelations of energy problems in the DPRK, renovating the DPRK’s coal mining sector is made more difficult because coal mines lack electricity due to electricity sector problems, and electricity generators in some cases have insufficient coal to supply power demand because of coal mine problems and problems with transporting coal to power plants.

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Foundations of Energy Security for the DPRK: 1990-2009

Tuesday, December 18th, 2012

The Nautilus Institute has put together an amazing research paper on the DPRK’s energy sector. I cannot understate the value of the quality/quantity of facts/figures/tables in this research.

You can download the PDF here.

I have also added it to my DPRK Economic statistics Page.

Here is the introduction:

Energy demand and supply in general—and, arguably, demand for and supply of electricity in particular—have played a key role in many high-profile issues involving North Korea, and have played and will play a central role in the resolution of the ongoing confrontation between North Korea and much of the international community over the North’s nuclear weapons program. Energy sector issues will continue to be a key to the resolution of the crisis, as underscored by the formation of a Working Group under the Six-Party Talks that was (and nominally, still is) devoted to the issue of energy and economic assistance to the DPRK.

The purpose of this report is to provide policy-makers and other interested parties with an overview of the demand for and supply of the various forms of energy used in the DPRK in six years during the last two decades:

  • 1990, the year before much of the DPRK’s economic and technical support from the Soviet Union was withdrawn;
  • 1996, thought by some to be one of the most meager years of the difficult economic 1990s in the DPRK; and 2000, a year that has been perceived by some observers as a period of modest economic “recovery” in the DPRK, as well as a marker of the period before the start, in late 2002, of a period of renewed political conflict between the DPRK, the United States, and it neighbors in Northeast Asia over the DPRK’s nuclear weapons development program; and
  • 2005, also a year in which observers have again noted an upward trend in some aspects of the DPRK economy, as well as the most recent year for which any published estimates on the DPRK’s energy sector and economy are available.
  • 2008, the last year in which the DPRK received heavy fuel oil from its negotiating partners in the Six-Party talks; and
  • 2009, the most recent year for which we have analyzed the DPRK’s energy sector.
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North Korea at night (2012-9-24)

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

Eric T. passes along this amazing satellite photo of the Korean peninsula taken at night on 2012-9-24:

The photo comes from NASA. Click image to see larger version.

When I get some time (maybe this weekend) I will see if I can put names to the lights in North Korea.

Here is the text from the NASA web page:

City lights at night are a fairly reliable indicator of where people live. But this isn’t always the case, and the Korean Peninsula shows why. As of July 2012, South Korea’s population was estimated at roughly 49 million people, and North Korea’s population was estimated at about half that number. But where South Korea is gleaming with city lights, North Korea has hardly any lights at all—just a faint glimmer around Pyongyang.

On September 24, 2012, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite captured this nighttime view of the Korean Peninsula. This imagery is from the VIIRS “day-night band,” which detects light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as gas flares, auroras, wildfires, city lights, and reflected moonlight.

The wide-area image shows the Korean Peninsula, parts of China and Japan, the Yellow Sea, and the Sea of Japan. The white inset box encloses an area showing ship lights in the Yellow Sea. Many of the ships form a line, as if assembling along a watery border.

Following the 1953 armistice ending the Korean War, per-capita income in South Korea rose to about 17 times the per-capital income level of North Korea, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Worldwide, South Korea ranks 12th in electricity production, and 10th in electricity consumption, per 2011 estimates. North Korea ranks 71st in electricity production, and 73rd in electricity consumption, per 2009 estimates.

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DPRK electricity grid

Friday, September 23rd, 2011

UPDATE: On a flight today I was able to translate most of this map.  Interestingly, it shows the incomplete Kumho Light Water Reactor (금호원자력발전소: in yellow on the right) but none of the other nuclear facilities.

ORIGINAL POST: A recent visitor to the DPRK took this picture of a map of the North Korean electricity grid:

See larger version here

This is one of the best maps of the North Korean electricity grid that I have seen (abstract as it is). This will be immensely helpful for my own efforts to map the North Korean electricity grid on Google Earth:

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Chinese lamps popular in DPRK

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

According to the Choson Ilbo

Chinese-made solar reading lamps are selling like hot cakes in North Korea. According to a North Korean source, the reading lamps sell for 10,000 to 20,000 North Korean won, a price several times the average monthly wage.

The customers are chiefly parents with children preparing for college entrance exams. Due to do the poor power supply, North Korea except for some parts of Pyongyang is plunged into pitch darkness every night, making it impossible to study. The solar-powered reading lamps provide a measure of independence from the power grid.

In the North, background determines if youngsters can enter college, and not all parents can afford to concentrate their energy on their children’s education. But relatively well-to-do families provide tutoring for their children by employing students of prestigious universities, such as Kim Il Sung University or Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, in efforts to prepare their children for college entrance exams.

Read the full article here:
N.Korean Parents ‘Zealous’ About Children’s Education
Choson Ilbo
3/8/2010

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