Presentation of a virtual power plant environment and its application with combined first-principle and data-driven models intended for the diagnostics of a power plant – Part 1

Abstract

This work aims to present and discuss the architecture and application aspects of the Virtual Power Plant (VPP) environment, a tool created for the purpose of modeling, simulation, data management, and visualization of power plant systems. The VPP environment is based on a general-purpose simulation package that provides a framework for incorporating a broad variety of models, ranging from real-time models to detailed models that require off-line execution. The VPP, as a tool, opens up the possibility to develop, test, and validate the feasibility of new software and hardware components within simulated operational scenarios. The first part of the work presents the architecture of the VPP and briefly describes its main components. The implementation, including necessary simplifications, encapsulation, and integration of sub-models is discussed and illustrated. A feedwater heater model is the main contributor to the performance of the entire simulation model of a power unit. In the first part of this work, the development process of such a model is presented, including necessary simplifications for improving its performance and functionality.