Virtual Power Plants as a Management Strategy to Improve Resilience in Electrical Distribution Networks

Abstract

In this article, the dispatch of energy in a distribution network that includes virtual power plants (VPP) is proposed as a strategy that improves the resilience of the Electric System in the face of a disruptive event linked to a natural phenomenon or technical failures such as blackouts that involve an interruption in the service of users for hours or even days. A case study was developed in a test network made up of distribution companies, conventional users and users with distributed energy resources (DER). The management of the DER is carried out through the VPP focusing on meeting the demand for the critical loads of the network during a disruptive event. As a test scenario, an IEEE-34 node network was selected in which an energy dispatch is carried out during one day, supported by distribution companies that regularly supply the distribution network and VPP when disruptive event has occurred. The mathematical modeling of the problem was carried out by posing an optimization problem, considering the objective functions of the distribution companies, VPP and their respective restrictions such as the maximum level of energy that they can supply and the coverage of Critic Loads (CL) required demand. For the solution quadratic criteria was used. The results show the viability of covering the energy demands of critical loads, optimally, when a disruptive event occurs, using virtual power plants.