Cold wave pushes S. Korea's electricity consumption up 6.1% in Jan.

South Korea consumed 49.89 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of power in January, up 6.1 percent from a year ago due to a severe cold wave and more working days despite a pandemic-induced business slump.

The average temperature was 3.6 C lower than usual across last month.

According to the Korea Power Exchange, the temperature went down below minus 20 C on Jan. 7, pushing the power demand up to 90.2 million kWh.

It marked the first time for the winter maximum electricity demand to exceed the 90 million kWh mark.

Despite the volume of consumption, the value of power sold went down 0.7 percent from a year ago to 4.58 trillion won, due to a drop in the average system marginal price (SMP) for electricity.

The SMP stood at 70.65 won per kWh in January, down 16.4 percent from the year before as coal and liquefied natural gas prices dropped amid weak crude prices.