South Korea Builds 1MVA UPS Safety Test Site for Data Centers

A 29.48 billion won program

The project, "Risk Assessment and Safety Technology Development for High-Capacity, High-Output 1MVA UPS," is backed by the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment and the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning. It runs from April 2024 to December 2027 with 13 participating organizations, including Sebang Electric and the Korea Institute of Energy Research, and a total budget of 29.48 billion won.

It has three strands. Sebang Electric is developing a 1MVA modular UPS reference model and a high-safety battery system, with protection against nine electrical hazards such as DC short circuits, ground faults, leakage current, insulation resistance, surges and ground potential. The safety corporation is building system-level performance verification and an evaluation system. The energy research institute is creating an operating program and real-time diagnosis and control based on simulated accident data.

Testing real fault conditions

The evaluation building in Wanju County, North Jeonbuk, was completed in April 2026 at a cost of 3.72 billion won, funded by the provincial government and Wanju County. Test equipment is being installed to apply ground faults, short circuits, surges and power-quality disturbances, and to check whether protection functions work, including the interaction between the UPS, batteries and protective devices.

The team is also developing early detection of battery degradation and anomalies, with operating procedures for normal, abnormal and emergency states and AI-based anomaly detection aimed at spotting fire or outage risks in advance.

Next year, the test facilities, evaluation system and control technology are due to feed into integrated demonstrations. The accumulated data will be used to refine evaluation procedures and firm up safety standards for real data center environments.