An innovative profit allocation to distributed energy resources integrated into virtual power plant

Virtual power plant (VPP), as a coalition of various distributed energy resources (DERs), faces the problem that how to distribute the gained benefit among its participants. In particular, the role of internal controllable units needs to be fairly evaluated, as their output may be restricted to support the use of renewables. This paper presents an innovative allocation strategy based on the traditional Shapley value. By introducing a scoring mechanism, the proposed strategy can correctly evaluate internal DERs' individual characteristics and actual performance, including marginal contribution, controllability, and credibility. Thus, members' allocation would be appropriately adjusted for their actual performance, and controllable units are rewarded to join the coalition. Moreover, the proposed method guarantees the obtained allocation belongs to the core, especially when the traditional Shapley value may be not in the core. Besides, a stability index is introduced to quantify DERs' stability degree and satisfaction degree to the allocated quota. Finally, numerical tests show the fairness and rationality of the proposed allocation strategy. And an analysis on VPP's stability is demonstrated by comparing the developed indices.