Economic dispatch of virtual power plants in an event-driven service-oriented framework using standards-based communications

The accelerated evolution of power systems and the associated new trends, such as Smart Grids, has stimulated the development of various approaches in handling the problems of increased electricity demands, power market (de)regulation and power systems reliability. One of the new key concepts is the virtual power plant (VPP), which represents a controllable portfolio of distributed energy resources (DERs). Such a portfolio can be operated in various modes, each with a set of unique control requirements. An open framework providing robust solution for large scale DERs integration and control is one of the key issues in Smart Grid development. This paper proposes an approach for solving this problem by utilizing standards-based power system communications, application modeling based on event-driven information services and algorithms for optimized VPP control. The applicability of the proposed technical solution is demonstrated and analyzed via simulation of the developed economic dispatch algorithm. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.