South Korea's Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment plans to issue a grid code, the technical rules for connecting to the network, for AI data centres within 2026, Newspim reported on 21 October1. The code would require sites to ride through grid disturbances and hold voltage steady. The ministry has not set its scope or start date.
Cho Kyoung-tae, a People Power Party member of parliament on the National Assembly's science committee, says the code should in principle exempt projects already under way. He plans to raise it at the National Assembly's annual audit of ministries. In May the ministry's objection removed a clause from the AI data-centre special act that would have let developers buy power directly from LNG (liquefied natural gas) plants. "They blocked direct LNG deals and told us to take power from the national grid, so raising the bar now makes no sense," Cho said.
Gigawatt-scale AI campuses at Ulsan and Donghae have started or are about to start, so the exemption decides whether the first large sites build to the new code. In August the government proposed regional power prices to pull the same load away from Seoul. Malaysia now bills data centres for the grid capacity they reserve, and Quebec's proposed tariff charges for contracted power left unused: three governments are writing the cost and conduct of large loads into grid rules.
