Optimal Scheduling Strategies of the Virtual Power Plant Considering Different Development Stages of the Electricity Market

This paper investigates the scheduling strategies for the virtual power plant (VPP) considering different development stages of the electricity market. Firstly, the operation models are formulated to characterize the aggregated components of VPP, including the distributed photovoltaic (PV), wind turbines, demand resources (DRs), electric vehicles (EV) and combined heat and power (CHP) unit as well as conventional units. Next, different operating frameworks have been proposed in order to derive the scheduling strategies of VPP for different development stages of the electricity market. Specifically, a price taker-based scheduling model is developed for VPP during the early stage of market construction. For the mature stage of market development, a bi-level framework is introduced to simulate the bidding and scheduling strategies of VPP acting as active participates. Moreover, the bi-level framework is further recast as a solvable problem. The proposed method is capable to characterize the scheduling strategies of VPP in different stages of market development.