Virtual Power Plant Optimization in Smart Grids: A Narrative Review

Abstract

Virtual power plants (VPPs) are promising solutions to address the decarbonization and energy efficiency goals in the smart energy grid. They assume the coordination of local energy resources such as energy generation, storage, and consumption. They are used to tackle problems brought by the stochastic nature of renewable energy, lack of energy storage devices, or insufficient local energy flexibility on the demand side. VPP modeling, management, and optimization are open to research problems that should consider, on one side, the local constraints in the operation of the energy resources and power flows and the energy grid’s sustainability objectives on the other side. There are multiple goals to create a VPP, such as to deliver energy services on a market or to the grid operator, to operate a microgrid in autonomy decoupled from the main grid, or to sustain local energy communities. In this paper, we present the results of a narrative review carried out on the domain of VPP optimization for the local energy grid integration. We have defined a search strategy that considers highly rated international databases (i.e., Elsevier, IEEE, and MDPI) in a six-year timeframe and applied objective inclusion/exclusion criteria for selecting articles and publications for the review; 95 articles have been analyzed and classified according to their objectives and solutions proposed for optimizing VPP integration in smart grids. The results of the study show that VPP concepts and applications are well addressed in the research literature, however, there is still work to be done on: engaging prosumers and citizens in such a virtual organization, developing heuristics to consider a wider range of local and global constraints and non-energy vectors, and to decentralize and make transparent the services delivery and financial settlement towards community members. This study can help researchers to understand the current directions for VPP integration in smart grids. As a next step we plan to further analyze the open research directions related to this problem and target the development of innovative solutions to allow the integration of multi-energy assets and management of cross energy sector services in energy communities.

A Joint Optimization Algorithm for Renewable Energy System

“…Without changing the distributed energy resources, through certain control and communication strategies, a large number of distributed power sources, energy storage, loads, etc., are assembled to participate in the electricity market [16][17][18][19]. Dispatching operation solves the problem of lack of effective coordination and control between independent distributed energy generation [20][21][22], and provides new ideas for power market operation.…”

A Review on Digital Twin Technology in Smart Grid, Transportation System and Smart City: Challenges and Future

“…The concept of DT is utilized for controller design and distributed energy resources in [40]. In [41,42], DT technology is developed and deployed to evaluate the controller operation of microgrids. Table 2 gives an overview of current studies on microgrids based on the digital twin approach.…”

Control Systems for Low-Inertia Power Grids: A Survey on Virtual Power Plants

“…The above features are not necessarily universal, and they should be taken only as a general guide. Indeed, recent works have also considered the aggregation of small MGs as VPP, arguing that these aggregations enable an optimal and more efficient power management in the grid, see [88], [89], and [90].…”

“…In contrast, Commercial VPPs have as main goal to optimize generation and demand (e.g., optimal dispatch) of electric power, which is usually achieved by solving optimization and control problems at slower time scales, see Figure 5. Other classifications of VPPs are presented in [92] Most of the existing literature on VPPs has focused on their commercial operation, characterizing their different scheduling techniques and operational constraints at slow time scales [49], or has broadly discussed the recent market, social and regulatory advances involved in their implementation [90]. However, less work has been devoted to the study of Technical VPPs that are in charge of providing ancillary services and general operational functionalities at faster time scales, such as guaranteeing the stability of the system, a property that is usually assumed a priori in order to solve quasi-static optimization problems related to voltage control, dispatch, and pricing [60], [93], to name just a few examples.…”