Integration of virtual power plants for a new-generation smart grid in electricity market

Engineering notes

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Chinese explanation / 中文解读

中文解读待补充：本站会优先为光伏效率、钙钛矿太阳能电池、储能技术、太阳能热利用、BIPV、并网技术等高价值论文补充中文说明。

Original abstract

With the increasing concern over greenhouse gas emissions, the penetration of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and photovoltaic systems has grown rapidly over the past decade. However, the power output of these renewable units is highly dependent on meteorological conditions, which limits their reliable participation in real-time electricity markets and often reduces the profitability for renewable energy owners. To address the operational uncertainties associated with renewable generation, the concept of a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) has emerged as an effective solution. A VPP aggregates diverse resources including conventional generators, energy storage systems, reserve units, electric vehicles, and flexible demand-side resources to enable coordinated operation and improved market participation. This aggregation allows energy consumption to be shifted strategically, enhancing both consumer benefits and overall social welfare. In this paper, a comprehensive modelling framework for a virtual power plant is developed, integrating stochastic renewable generation with conventional power units. The participating resources operate within predefined confidence bounds and are subjected to reward or penalty mechanisms across multiple time horizons to maintain supply-demand balance while maximizing market profit. The resulting decision-making problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model and solved using a DC load flow approach implemented in MATLAB (version 2015a), employing the Branch and Bound algorithm to handle both continuous and discrete decision variables. The key contribution of this work lies in enabling time-dependent scheduling decisions for VPP components, allowing real-time market settlement through bidirectional communication between the market and generation units. Simulation results demonstrate that such coordinated real-time operation significantly enhances the profit of the VPP facilitator while ensuring system reliability.

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