A Comprehensive Valuation of Virtual Power Plant in Multiple Electricity Markets

The Virtual Power Plant (VPP) is a flexible representation of a portfolio of distributed energy resources (DER) that allows them providing services to power systems and participating in electricity markets. This paper investigates a comprehensive valuation method of VPP and the units of DER in VPP for seeking the way to implement it in a real market environment. The applications of VPP in different electricity markets such as spot energy market, bilateral contracts, balancing market, spinning reserves and reactive power market are discussed. A cooperative game theoretical method is proposed to fairly share the market profit among the DER units in VPP. Numerical results derived from market simulation have shown the value of VPP in different markets and the effectiveness of the proposed valuation method.