LS Electric Licenses KEPCO's SEDA Diagnostics to Chase Fab Power Deals

KEPCO's failure-prediction system has prevented 88 power equipment failures since 2021 and saved 37 billion won — roughly $27.6 million — in recovery costs in 2025 alone. On November 5, LS Electric announced it had signed a deal to take that technology into semiconductor fabs and data centers.

The "power equipment preventive diagnostic solution (SEDA) technology transfer agreement" was signed at BIXPO 2026, the Bitgaram International Electric Power Technology Expo held at the Kim Dae-jung Convention Center in Gwangju on November 4. LS Electric CEO Chae Dae-seok and Kim Jae-gun, vice president of KEPCO's power system division, attended with officials from both companies.

What does SEDA actually do?

SEDA watches, in real time, the condition of major power equipment inside substations. It catches the early signs of failure, then lets operators act before an accident happens. The point is simple: fewer sudden shutdowns, more stable supply.

Under the agreement, LS Electric gains technology to analyze the condition of core equipment — gas-insulated switchgear (GIS) and transformers — and to sort failure risk into five levels. It also picks up an alerting function that fires when abnormal signs appear.

The track record is the selling point. Since KEPCO introduced SEDA in 2021, the system has blocked 88 equipment failures through the present. In 2025 alone, it saved an estimated 37 billion won ($27.6 million) in failure recovery costs.

How will LS Electric deploy it?

The plan is to fold the transferred technology into LS Electric's own equipment condition monitoring system (CMS), lifting diagnostic accuracy and reliability. From there, the company will link the CMS with its asset management system (AMS) to build a framework that spans diagnostics, maintenance and operational management in one stack.

Diagnostic results feed decisions, too. Operators reviewing failure risk levels can use them to decide which equipment to inspect first — a triage function aimed squarely at sites where downtime costs dwarf repair bills.

Why fabs and data centers?

Because a power hiccup in a fab is not a hiccup. It's scrapped wafers, halted process tools and lost throughput. LS Electric expects strong demand for preventive diagnostics in both semiconductor fabrication plants and data centers, where power quality and supply stability tie directly to productivity given the nature of the processes.

"This technology transfer will serve as an opportunity to further strengthen our solution competitiveness by combining KEPCO's excellent preventive diagnostic technology with our power equipment management capabilities," CEO Chae Dae-seok said. "Based on our technology for predicting and systematically managing power equipment failures in advance, we will expand our business in markets where stable power supply is critical, such as semiconductor manufacturing and data centers."

A shift from repair to prediction

The partnership fits a broader move in power equipment maintenance — away from the post-failure recovery model and toward a predictive one. For customers such as semiconductor plants and data centers, where uninterrupted operation is non-negotiable, the cost of production halts caused by equipment failure far exceeds recovery costs, industry observers say. That gap is what gives them a strong incentive to adopt preventive diagnostic solutions.

For LS Electric, the deal also does something structural: it lays a foundation to diversify revenue beyond equipment sales into an asset management business combining diagnostic and maintenance services — recurring service income layered on top of the hardware.

And it may not be the last such deal. If more cases emerge in South Korea's power equipment market of public-sector technology moving into private products, additional technology transfer agreements could follow, observers say.

With KEPCO's field-proven diagnostics inside its CMS stack, LS Electric is now positioned to sell uptime itself to the fabs and data centers whose margins depend on it.