Virtual Power Plant, Future Promising

With the rapid development of the global economy today, the demand for electricity and other energy sources in people's production and daily life is continuously increasing. With the continuous progress of technology, various emerging technologies have emerged, and traditional technologies in the four major links of the power system (generation, transmission, distribution, and transmission) will face the fate of being replaced by emerging technologies.

The next overall development trend of power system is the energy Internet based on distributed generation. The development of energy Internet technology makes it possible to seamlessly connect new power supplies to the grid. It can organically combine communication, advanced sensing, automatic control and other technologies, and can achieve self-management and self recovery, with strong compatibility. After the distributed generation is connected to the power grid, it can realize real-time interaction and coordinated operation through reasonable application of energy Internet technology. In this context, virtual power plant technology has emerged.

The concept of virtual power plant originated in the United States. The so-called virtual power plant actually refers to an operation mode in the energy Internet, which can gather power of different types of technologies, such as wind power, thermal power, hydropower, etc. Under the supervision of decentralized management system, through advanced communication technology and software architecture, it can realize the aggregation, coordination and optimization of various geographically dispersed DERs, participate in the power supply coordination management of power market and grid operation, enhance power dispatching capacity, promote power market transactions, bring greater economic benefits to power plants and users, and provide higher quality power services.

The current development path of renewable energy is limited, and the peak electricity demand in society continues to rise. In addition, the impact of extreme weather has led to a shortage of electricity supply and demand in some regions. Power system accidents have also occurred frequently worldwide, such as the California power outage in 2003, the Moscow power outage in 2005, the London power outage in 2006, and the power supply interruption in multiple cities and counties in southern China caused by snow disasters in 2008. Coupled with the impact of energy shortages, governments around the world have made energy conservation and improving energy efficiency their basic energy policies and implemented a series of energy-saving and emission reduction measures. Virtual power plant technology can solve the problems that existed in the integration and control of distributed and clean energy in the past, which is conducive to the rational optimization and utilization of resources, and ensures the safety of renewable energy proportional power systems. It has been successfully applied in various countries in Europe and America, and is considered an important development direction of intelligent distribution networks by the academic community.

One is that virtual power plants aggregate various distributed energy sources, adjust power supply and demand based on price fluctuations, and provide balancing services to TSO in a balanced market, greatly improving the flexibility of the power system and providing flexibility services for renewable energy, which helps to solve the problems of re scheduling and grid congestion; Secondly, with the gradual increase in the proportion of renewable energy integration into the grid, the start-up of aggregated virtual power plants mainly consisting of small-scale power sources can significantly optimize the power balance of the medium and low voltage power grid. Thirdly, virtual power plants not only enhance the space for renewable energy consumption, but also reduce the cost of electricity infrastructure. The flexibility service of virtual power plants can greatly reduce the investment in power system infrastructure, reduce the investment in traditional generator sets, and avoid grid expansion caused by increased peak electricity consumption. The fourth is that virtual power plants lay a solid foundation for the direct sales of renewable energy in the electricity market, and promote the large-scale and larger proportion of grid connected consumption of renewable energy by providing flexible services. At the same time, virtual power plants also provide stable investment return expectations for distributed energy investors, bringing good investment prospects.

As one of the important means to enhance the regulation capacity of the power system, virtual power plants will play an important role in alleviating power shortages, providing more economical and efficient power supply and demand solutions, and playing an important role in promoting the construction of smart grids. In the future, virtual power plants will become an important component of smart grids.