Smart EV Battery Scheduling in a Virtual Power Plant: A Stochastic Receding-Horizon Convex Optimization Approach

In this paper, we present the virtual power plant of renewable energy generators and electric vehicles, which can supply electricity on demand addressing intermittency and participate in electricity markets profitably. Unlike conventional generators, where the generation can be efficiently and more accurately predicted, intermittent generators cannot engage in the electricity market because of their otherwise nature. Virtual-Power-Plants use EV battery storage to reduce the need to invest in dedicated storage while enhancing its profit by scheduling the energy supply to the grid. However, the stochasticity in wind energy generation, changing EV storage availability, and varying market prices are critical concerns of VPP operators. To account for this issue, we formulate the optimization problem for maximizing the profit of renewable energy generators as a Stochastic Receding Horizon convex optimization problem. Furthermore, we introduce a novel scheme of energy credits for EV owners in exchange for using their battery storage. The convex formulation guarantees the optimal solution of the optimization problem if feasible in real-time. Thus, despite the concerns, the VPP can participate in real-time and day-ahead markets and make huge profits. Furthermore, we consider a real-world case study to demonstrate the practicality of our strategy and show that the proposed VPP scheme vividly increases the profit of renewable energy generators.