Virtual Power Plants Security Challenges, Solutions, and Emerging Trends: A Review

Virtual power plants (VPPs) are used to manage and integrate renewable energy resources for better management and coordination. This integration, combined with modern communication technologies, offers several benefits for VPPs, such as improved interconnectedness between the energy assets, increased efficiency, and ease of management. The current article reviews current state-of-the-art security challenges in VPPs as well as the existing security solutions for securing them. Methods such as network segmentation, continuous monitoring, and encryption were analyzed along with emerging technologies such as blockchain, zero-trust, and federated learning. The findings show that the current solutions still work to some extent; however, with the introduction of new technologies, it is possible to increase related security levels in VPPs significantly.