Performance and applicability of a new geographic routing protocol for virtual power plants

The Smart Grid (SG) incorporates communication networks to the conventional electricity system in order to intelligently integrate distributed energy resources (DERs) and allow for demand side management. The move to Smart grid in developing countries has to cope with great disparities of ICT infrastructures even within the same city. Besides, individual DERs are often too small to be allowed access to energy market, likewise power utilities are unable to effectively control and manage small DERs. We propose the use of affordable and scalable wireless communication technology to aggregate geographically sparse DERs into a single virtual power plant. The enrollment of prosumers in the VPP is conditional to financial performance of the plant. Thus, the VPPs are dynamic and are expected to scale up as more and more prosumers are attracted by their financial benefits. the communication network has to follow this progression and therefore to be scalable and rapidly deploy-able. We present a routing algorithm for data communication within the VPP to support centralized, decentralized or fully distributed control of the VPP's DERs.