Optimal Participation of Virtual Power Plants in the Electricity Market Considering Multi-Energy Systems

The growth and modernization of the power system are the keys to enabling economic progress. The deregulation, added to the new emerging production technologies, conversion, and storage, triggered a change in the way of managing the power system worldwide. This work analyses the optimal dispatch of a virtual power plant (VPP) with active participation in the electricity market, considering multi-energy systems. The objective is to minimize the total operating cost of the power plant. The power plant is fed by two external networks: electrical and natural gas. The VPP is composed of energy production, conversion, and storage technologies, also considering the integration of a wind turbine and a set of electric vehicles (EVs). In addition to the Grid-to-Vehicle (G2V) charging, the advantage of Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology is also verified, which allows the injection of power into the grid through the vehicles and Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) technology, enabling EVs to contribute to the satisfaction of the electrical load, reducing the costs, showing the advantages as well of EVs' integration in the VPP under analysis.