A New Strategy for Economic Virtual Power Plant Utilization in Electricity Market Considering Energy Storage Effects and Ancillary Services

A group of distributed generators (DGs) systems including wind, solar, diesel, energy storage (ES), etc., that are under a central management and control is often considered as virtual power plant (VPP) concept. One of the components of a VPP is ES, whose presence and participation in the electricity market can create business opportunities. In this paper, a new mathematical-based strategy for identifying different types of trading situations considering VPPs effects is proposed in the electricity market to obtain maximum benefit. Also VPP trading between energy and ancillary services is considered and analysed. The presented model considers all limitations of the VPP including network constrains and the structure of VPPs. The optimal management of distributed energy units determines the state of charge (SoC) or discharge of ES resources and the amount of intermittent load for the day ahead electricity market. By implementing the proposed model on the microgrid (MG), two different modes of trading for VPPs are examined and the changes of efficiency related to energy storages are analysed. In order to solve the issue of optimal operation strategy, an intelligent approach based on differential evolution (DE) algorithm is used. The obtained simulation results of both modes are compared with those VPP without energy storage. The results show notable profits in both modes.