Trusted operation framework for virtual power plants

The prevalence of intermittent renewable energy sources further stimulates the need for operating reserve to maintain the supply-demand balance of the power system. DERs can form a VPP to provide both upward and downward operating reserve to the power system. The process of providing operating reserve as a VPP includes evaluating of reserve capacity of DERs, bidding in the operating reserve market, responding to the regulation signal, assessing the response performance of DERs and allocating the profit (see the Figure, which is reprinted with permission from iEnergy, 2(2): 133-142, 2023 © 2023 The Author(s)). The operation characteristics of various DERs are modeled for the evaluation of their available operating reserve capacity. However, due to the uncertainty of the DER status, there might exist a mismatch between the estimated capacity at the bidding stage and the available capacity at the response stage, which could results in an inaccurate tracking of the regulation signal. Thus, a timely update of the operating reserve capacity evaluation result is introduced to the operation of VPP, which enables the proactive compensation for capacity mismatch during the stage of assigning of regulating power.