Development and Practice of Virtual Power Plant Participating in Power Grid Regulation and Market Operation

With the large-scale development of renewable energy, the regulation resources of the power grid are becoming increasingly scarce and the pressure of peak regulation is gradually increasing. It is urgent to tap new regulation resources to enhance the flexible regulation capability of power systems. By aggregating the adjustable resources such as distributed energy sources, energy storage, thermal storage, and industrial and commercial loads, the operation status of various resources is optimized and controlled, and the virtual power plant can provide the flexible regulation capabilities of power systems. Firstly, in this paper, the development of the domestic and overseas virtual power plants is reviewed, and the definition of the virtual power plant is given. Then, the typical practice cases of virtual power plants are introduced. Secondly, the architecture for virtual power plants for participating in the power grid regulation and market operation is proposed, and three aspects of the key technologies of aggregation and regulation, market trading, and information communication in virtual power plants are discussed. Finally, the future development trend of virtual power plants is prospected. © 2022 Automation of Electric Power Systems Press. All rights reserved.