South Korea is set to become home to a new $8.2bn offshore demonstration wind project, according to local media.

The project, which is slated to be the largest in the Yellow Sea, will be used to test 20 turbines produced by local manufacturers in South Korea, its regional government has confirmed.

The proving area off the Buan and Yeonggwang coasts will be developed in three major phases, with the first smallest phase to be complete by 2013 and used to test locally-developed 5MW-sized turbines.

This section of the project is just a taster of what is to come as the government has ambitious plans to add 180 similarly-sized turbines to the project by 2016, before delivering another 300 turbines by 2019.

The total offshore wind development is planned to reach a full capacity of 2,500MW, but has been reduced from an earlier blueprint where the government had hoped to build 1,000 wind turbines by the end of the third phase.

The most expensive part of the project will be the foundational structure and underwater grids that serve the project, so additional turbines added to this structure are unlikely to entail great additional costs.

Korea’s head of energy and climate policy, Kang Nam-hoon said that South Korea is aiming to become the world’s third largest country in terms of wind power.

Seoul relies on imported energy to cover 97 per cent of its energy requirements. The region is due to introduce Renewable Portfolio Standards in 2012, according to local media. With 20 nuclear plants already in operation, the country also plans to construct 11 nuclear plants in the next 20 years, South Korea’s only news agency, the publicly-funded Yonhap said.

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