On the Self-Scheduling of Cellular Base Station-Based Virtual Power Plants

Constructing virtual power plants (VPPs) based on cellular base stations (CBSs) can effectively enable the CBSs to participate in power system operations. Then, like VPPs constructed by other distributed resources, it is essential for CBS-based VPPs to conduct self-scheduling at the day-ahead stage. However, the operational flexibility of CBS-based VPPs has yet to be systematically investigated, so the dispatch potential cannot be fully explored. This article proposes a self-scheduling framework based on the device-level modeling of CBS operational flexibility. Both the DC part and the AC part of CBSs are systematically studied. In the scheduling framework, the backup storage units at the DC part are arranged to utilize the spare capacity to conduct temporal arbitrage while guaranteeing the power supply reliability requirement; the cooling infrastructures at the AC part are dispatched with optimized schemes with temperature prerequisites. The synergy effect improves the scheduling of CBS-based VPPs and reduces operation costs. Case studies validate the proposed framework.