Customer-side Energy Management Considering the Availability of Renewable Virtual Power Plants

Abstract

With the high penetration of distributed generation (DG) in the power grid and the competition in the power market, virtual power plant (VPP) has emerged as a new concept to cope with DGs and competition in the power market. This paper reviews VPP from the aspects of composition and operating system. VPP is composed of many DGS, including conventional schedulable power plants, intermittent generation units and potential flexible load and energy storage units. This article provides a comprehensive description of these components and points out some of the most important components. Also, this paper introduces two typical VPP types, commercial VPP and technical VPP. Finally, this paper briefly classifies and discusses the important studies related to VPP based on combined heat and power (CHP), VPP components and modeling, VPP with demand response (DR), VPP bidding strategy and VPP's participation in the power market.