A virtual power plant for the aggregation of domestic heating load flexibility

Demand-side is becoming more active in various power system operations as it is able to provide the system with extra flexibility to balance the volatility of the generation-side. Suggested applications can vary from short term emergency control to participation in a day-ahead market. In order to improve the presence of demand response in these operations, this paper describes a virtual power plant (VPP) for domestic heating load aggregation. The main contribution is to introduce the three states of VPP operation: normal, emergency and restoration that allow loads to participate in the maintaining of consumption-generation balance in different time scales. Furthermore, the study discusses a multi-agent system (MAS) approach to implement the proposed VPP. The VPP operation is demonstrated and tested by dynamic simulations.