Two-stage coordinated operation framework for virtual power plant with aggregated multi-stakeholder microgrids in a deregulated electricity market

Abstract

The virtual power plant (VPP) is a promising paradigm to promote the integration of renewable energy-based microgrid (MG) into the power system. This paper addresses the coordinated operation and energy trading problem for VPP aggregated with multi-stakeholder MGs. A two-stage hierarchical coordinated operation framework for VPP is developed consisting of the day-ahead bidding and intra-day dispatch fully considering the settlement of deregulated electricity market, the profit of the VPP operator and the aggregation interest of MGs. To cope with the intra-day operational uncertainties of individual MGs, receding horizon-based model predictive control (MPC) is adopted and extra power balancing services are provided by the VPP operator. The proposed solution is extensively assessed through simulation experiments in presence of four MGs with different ownerships and penetration levels of RDERs, and the numerical results confirm that the proposed solution outperforms two benchmarks. Further, the comparison with two existing methods demonstrates that the adoption of time-of-use price (ToUP) and extra power balancing services in the proposed solution can benefit both MGs and the VPP operator with enhanced energy management performance.