A Review on Virtual Power Plant Concept, Application and Challenges

Due to the high penetration of distributed energy resources (DER) in the power grid and electricity market, numerous papers have focused on the new idea of virtual power plant (VPP). VPP can integrate DERs such as distributed generation (DG), energy storage, controllable loads, electric vehicle (EV) to provide capacity and ancillary services to the grid operations, sell power to electricity wholesale markets, enhance the overall system economics and reliability, promote efficient optimization in resources, and facilitate renewable integration to the grid. This paper reviews the VPP in terms of concept, applications and challenges and proposes a new concept of VPP. In the paper, 9 typical VPP projects are introduced, which are mainly distributed in Europe, USA and Australia. In addition, VPP also brings challenges in resource allocation, operation and control system, communication technology and power transactions.