ABSTRACT
Clean virtual power plant (VPP) aggregates small distributed energy resources (DREs) to act together as a single power plant with the possibility to store the surplus or release the electricity according to the system needs (by using storage, controllable loads (CL), smart appliances, etc.) in an effective way. Moreover, VPP that provides flexibility and contributes to the stability for the grid by offering ancillary and flexibility services (mainly scheduling/dispatch, frequency control, balancing and reactive power and voltage control) to increase the attractivity, bankability and profitability of VPPs and maximize the return of investments (ROIs). Integrating renewable energy source (ES), especially wind and solar, in energy grids comes with variabilities and uncertainties issues that need an appropriate demand-response management and proposer planning and coordination. The two most challenging parts for their penetration are the complementarity between the VPP components and the flexibility capacity that should be provided through the CL, storage systems and ESs. This chapter presents a review of the main research topics revolving around the optimization of portfolio and proposes an interoperable application programming interface (API) that estimates key metrics for VPPs. Particularly, we present a complementarity index that calculates the level of synergy between VPP components based on the correlation between different energy systems and a flexibility factor that computes the capability of a VPP to maintain balance between generation and load during uncertainty. Furthermore, we discuss the robustness of these indexes by simulating some scenarios with different levels of variability and uncertainty, and we provide insights into future research directions.
