Applications of Virtual Power Plants approaches

The paper highlights the main characteristics of Virtual Power Plants (VPP). A Virtual Power Plant is a cluster of distributed generation units (such as photovoltaic power plants, wind turbines or small hydro) and any other sources of power that can cooperate together in the local area, and are controlled by a central control entity. An analysis of a VPP that is used to cover the load is performed for the whole day. The distributed generators from the VPP have different merit orders and outputs. Another analysis is performed for a power system in which a VPP is added. The analysis compares the power flow for the situations with and without the VPP.