The Concept, Project and Current Status of Virtual Power Plant: A Review

Due to technological advancements in recent years, distributed energy resources (DER) applications have become more prevalent in households and businesses, including various renewable energy applications. While the virtual power plant (VPP) can integrate energy storage, flexible loads and DER, etc., it can support the power grid operating stability and security. Therefore, more and more researchers give their attention to VPP and advise on their optimization. This paper states the VPP concept from other researchers’ studies and provides a detailed explanation. Meanwhile, some typical VPP projects worldwide are also presented. In addition, some potential challenges and future development advice in the VPP studies are also presented.

Optimal dispatching of integrated energy system considering flexible load

Demand response, as an effective dispatching method, has been widely used in the optimization research of integrated energy system (IES). In this article, first, the mathematical model of flexible loads including shiftable electric, heat, and cooling load are established in line with their characteristics. Second, an optimal scheduling model of the IES is built, where the minimum sum of system operation and maintenance and the environmental protection costs comprise the objective function. Furthermore, the alternating direction multiplier method is used to solve the optimal scheduling model in a fully distributed manner. Finally, simulation results show that the proposed model and algorithm can efficiently solve the IES optimal dispatching problem, reduce the peak-valley difference, and improve the stability of the system.

Energy Optimisation Models for Self-Sufficiency of a Typical Turkish Residential Electricity Customer of the Future

This paper utilises a two-stage demand response-enabled energy management algorithm for a typical Turkish self-sufficient living space. The proposed energy management model provides an additional gain in line with the goal of self-sufficiency by scheduling flexible loads and energy storage systems at home according to a static time of use tariff. The impact of load scheduling and battery optimisation were evaluated in the scope of self-sufficiency, economic gain and return on investment performances. According to the results, the proposed two-stage structure provided a net saving increase of 9.5% in the one-battery scenario, and it rises to 14% in the design with three batteries. On the other hand, when we inspect the energy management scenarios with the return on investment (ROI) calculations, we see that the single battery system has a higher ROI than the two or three battery systems due to the increased battery cost. Moreover, the ROI value, 13.9% without optimisation, increased to 15.3% in the proposed Home Energy Management System (HEMS) model. As can be seen from this calculation, intelligent management of batteries and flexible loads provided a 10% increase in ROI value.