Dynamic Modeling and Optimal Control Strategies of Virtual Power Plant driven by Commercial HVACs

Abstract: The increasing of grid-connected variable renewable energy (VRE) on the demand side causes balance problems in the power system. Thus, dealing with the uncertainty, variability, and consequently, flexibility requirement is becoming an urgent challenge to the power system operators. Virtual power plant (VPP), which bundles different types of small-scale distributed energy resources (DERs) into a single unit for optimization will effectively mitigate those uncertainties. An optimal VPP energy management method is proposed in this article for optimal energy and operating reserve (OR) scheduling. The studied VPP is a cluster of dispersed generating units (including dispatchable and stochastic power sources), flexible loads, as well as storage units. VPP operator has to make decisions based on the uncertainty coming from the stochastic VRE, load demand, as well as market electricity price. Thus, a dynamic risk reserve quantification method is proposed to cover both VRE power and load forecast uncertainties, while information gap decision theory is applied in the unit commitment procedures to study the impact of price uncertainty on the decision-making of VPP operators. Finally, the proposed method is implemented and verified with a case study, and optimal decisions are discussed.