Optimal Dispatch of Multi-VPP Considering Stackelberg Game and Carbon Trading

Abstract

With virtual power plants (VPPs) that aggregate the distributed energy resource (DER) participate in the market transaction, it is difficult for the traditional centralized optimization method to reveal the competitive relationship between different VPPs which belong to independent stakeholders. Moreover, despite the rise of the carbon market, few researches focus on the carbon trading under multi-stakeholders. This paper proposes a multi-VPP optimal scheduling strategy based on the Stackelberg game and carbon trading. The Stackelberg game model, taking the operator as the leader and each VPP as the follower, pursues the maximum interests of both parties, so as to study the interaction between the pricing strategy of the operator and the energy scheduling of each VPP. Simulation results show that the proposed strategy can flexibly coordinate the energy scheduling of multiple VPPs, and the consideration of carbon trading significantly increases the profit of operator, up to 7.25%, while mobilizing the enthusiasm of each VPP to reduce carbon emissions.