Modeling and simulation of virtual power plant in energy management system applications

The high penetration of renewable resources in the existing grid, increases the complexities of the grid. Nowadays, the integration of renewable resources became a big issue. These resources cannot participate in electricity markets because of their smaller size. The concept of virtual power plant (VPP) can enable the market participation of small generating units. The VPP can also provide ancillary services like frequency support, reactive power support. This paper explains the VPP concept, the structure of VPP and also the market participation. An Energy Management algorithm for VPP is also explained. A small VPP model, consists of two distributed generation (DG) sources and two controllable loads, is demonstrated in MATLAB-SIMULINK. In addition, the current situation of the VPP, and identifies and proposes the future research lines.