Generic Virtual Power Plants: Management of distributed energy resources under liberalized electricity market

The emergence of Virtual Power Plant (VPP) can be attributed to the major boost of distributed energy resources (DER), which satisfies the changing needs of modern society on energy industry. Based on this concept, DER units disregarding the differences in their individual technology are loosely aggregated with a unique interface to the external grid and the energy market. This paper gives a brief overview of state of the art of the VPP technologies and proposes a generic VPP (GVPP) model running under liberalized electricity market environment. An attempt is made to provide an outline of the main functions that are necessary for the efficient operation of the GVPP. By utilizing the developed function-based platform, GVPP developers with different system requirements are able to get the most flexibility out of the GVPP model. A case study shows how a broker GVPP is developed based on the selection of appropriate functions.