Transition from fossil fuels power plants toward Virtual Power Plants of distribution networks

Abstract

One of the most significant challenges of metropolitan cities is producing the exceedingly growing demands of customers. To do this, fossil fuels power plants need to be established and transmission lines are required to be expanded. Founding fossil fuels power plants are along with more emission production and expenses. Worldwide smart grid project obligates all the countries to provide some parts of their energy demands through renewable energy resources. Distributed Energy Resources (DERs): Wind Turbine (WT), Combined Heat and Power (CHP), Energy Storage (ES), and Demand Response programs (DR) are taken into account as the outstanding technologies of distributed generations. Interconnection of DERs to electric distribution networks constructs Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) with slighter emission and lower expenses. In this paper, effectiveness of different DERs within the VPPs is investigated in reducing emission, expenses, and technical challenges of electric distribution networks. An Energy Hub (EH) is modeled to portray the problem. GAMS software is employed to resolve the problem. Simulation results manifest the operation costs and energy consumption reduction on electric distribution networks by utilization of the different aforementioned technologies within the VPPs. The results also demonstrate effects of load and loss factors as well as emission production through employment of the different DERs within VPPs.