Demand Response from an Integrated Electricity-Hydrogen Virtual Power Plant

The rapid growth of large-scale renewables and Distributed Energy Resources (DER) leads to increased uncertainty and reduced controllability of energy generation. Thus, control of demand is becoming more necessary to maintain network energy balancing. Individually these devices are often too small to operate in the electrical markets and operated individually can have negative impact on the local network. One method to address this is by the use of Virtual Power Plants (VPPs), which aggregate a diverse set of DR devices with a similar network location to act as a single entity. Integrating different energy vectors into the VPP can both provide additional storage and flexibility to the VPP, but also provide additional revenues. Hydrogen storage is a promising technology that will be considered in this paper for integration with DR. This paper will present the applications of a framework for modelling an electricity-hydrogen VPP that can schedule and dispatch devices providing DR; compete in multiple wholesale markets; and provide local network support. This VPP operates with a 24-hour planning horizon, and a 5minute dispatch. A case study has been conducted on a VPP that contains renewable generation, thermal generation, curtailable load and hydrogen-based devices with hydrogen storage. The results show that the VPP can effectively control the devices providing DR and utilize the hydrogen storage and maximize VPP earnings while providing local network support whilst effectively adapting to price changes.