• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.67-73
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• 2015

Almost base-loaded power plants such as flaming coal and nuclear energy require large-scale transmission facilities (LTFs) in order to send electricity to remote consumption areas. As well known, LTFs incur various social costs. However, a decentralized generation source such as integrated energy business (IEB)-based combined heat and power (CHP) plant is located in nearby electricity-consuming area, and thus it does not demand LTFs, providing the benefits from avoiding the damages caused by them. This study attempts to measure the benefits of avoiding the damages from the LTFs by the use of the contingent valuation (CV) method. To this end, a national survey of randomly chosen 1,000 households was implemented and the public's willingness to pay (WTP) for substituting consumption of electricity generated from flaming coal-fired power plant, currently a dominant generation source in Korea, with that produced from IEB-based CHP plant. The results show that the WTP for the substitution is estimated to be about 41.4 won per kWh. Considering that this value amounts to 33% of the average price of residential electricity in 2014, the external benefit of the IEB-based CHP as a decentralized generation appears to be large.