Evaluation of Communication Infrastructures for Distributed Optimization of Virtual Power Plant Schedules

Abstract

With the transition towards renewable energy resources, the impact of small distributed generators (DGs) increases, leading to the need to actively stabilize distribution grids. DGs may be organized in virtual power plants (VPPs), where DGs’ schedules must be coordinated to enable the VPP to act as a single plant. One approach to solving this problem is using multi-agent systems (MAS) to offer autonomous, robust, and flexible control methods. The coordination of such systems requires communication between agents. The time required for this depends on communication characteristics, determined by the underlying communication infrastructure. In this paper, we investigate communication influences for the wireless technologies CDMA450 and LTE Advanced on the fully distributed optimization heuristic COHDA, which is used to perform optimized scheduling for a VPP. The use case under consideration is the adaptation of schedules to provide flexibility for regional congestion management for delivery on a regionalized ancillary service market (rAS). We investigate the scalability of the VPP and the effects of disturbances in the communication infrastructure. The results show that the optimization duration of COHDA can be influenced by the underlying communication infrastructure and that this optimization method is applicable to a limited extent for product delivery of rASs.

Virtual Power Plant Optimization in Smart Grids: A Narrative Review

“…Digital twins of energy assets 13 [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] Energy forecasting 14 [1,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] Optimization and coordination 18 [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52] VPP applications in smart grids Energy services delivery 31 [4,5,22,35,38, Local energy autonomy 21 [5,…”

“…From the simulation result, it is possible to reduce the supply costs, thus leading to a significant increase in profit of the VPP. Making a transition towards renewable energy gives small, distributed generators a huge impact, thus leadig to the use of actively stabilized distribution grids [4].…”

“…It aims at combining and coordinating energy production with storage and consumption resources featuring controllable loads in an optimal way to meet renewable integration or energy costs minimization objectives. The associated optimization problem is usually addressed in the literature using various heuristics [4]. VPPs consider the predicted energy demand and production values for different resources, the operational, power flow, and cost constraints.…”

Feasibility of Solar Grid-Based Industrial Virtual Power Plant for Optimal Energy Scheduling: A Case of Indian Power Sector

“…In the last decade, the biggest change that the current distribution network had witnessed is the introduction of the Virtual Power Plant (VPP). The VPP is the big forward step taken in the path of the sustainable and robust energy future through its efficient and autonomous operation [1,2]. The core components of the VPP include Grid interconnected Distributed Energy Resource (DER), Energy Storage System (ESS), flexible loads, and communication technologies [3].…”

Quantifying geospatial interdependencies of ICT and power system based on open data

“…Pietsch et al (2020) have proposed an approach to design scenarios for the communication network between distributed generators. Oest et al (2021) have described an evaluation model for the optimized scheduling of virtual power plants. These publications have different objectives, but they all use various assumptions regarding the composition of the interconnected ICT and power system in order to construct evaluation scenarios.…”