VPP Profitability Assessment: Development of Simulator with EV Charge/Discharge and Electricity Trading Functions in Japan

This study develops a simulator to compute and assess the profitability of a virtual power plant (VPP) that would contribute to discussing the promising business model of VPP for Japan's electricity market. The simulator examines how VPP maximizes the use of distributed energy resources (DERs) and profit under the existing power system. We examine the impacts of EVs' charge/discharge operation and electricity market trading on VPP profitability, in which EV s are used for supply and demand adjustment that optimizes profit. The use of EV sand electricity market trading is expected to reduce electricity costs in VPP compared to the case that does not use them. Furthermore, we investigate the impact of increased solar PV penetration on profitability.