Virtual power producers integration into MASCEM

All over the world Distributed Generation is seen as a valuable help to get cleaner and more efficient electricity. Under this context distributed generators, owned by different decentralized players can provide a significant amount of the electricity generation. To get negotiation power and advantages of scale economy, these players can be aggregated giving place to a new concept: the Virtual Power Producer. Virtual Power Producers are multi-technology and multi-site heterogeneous entities. Virtual Power Producers should adopt organization and management methodologies so that they can make Distributed Generation a really profitable activity, able to participate in the market. In this paper we address the integration of Virtual Power Producers into an electricity market simulator –MASCEM – as a coalition of distributed producers.

Virtual power producers market strategies

This paper presents MASCEM - a multi-agent based electricity market simulator. MASCEM uses game theory, machine learning techniques, scenario analysis and optimisation techniques to model market agents and to provide them with decision-support. This paper mainly focus on the MASCEM ability to provide the means to model and simulate Virtual Power Producers (VPP). VPPs are represented as a coalition of agents, with specific characteristics and goals. The paper detail some of the most important aspects considered in VPP formation and in the aggregation of new producers and includes a case study.

Multi-agent electricity market simulation with dynamic strategies & virtual power producers

Distributed energy resources will provide a significant amount of the electricity generation and will be a normal profitable business. In the new decentralized grid, customers will be among the many decentralized players and may even help to co-produce the required energy services such as demand-side management and load shedding. So, they will gain the opportunity to be more active market players. The aggregation of DG plants gives place to a new concept: the Virtual Power Producer (VPP). VPPs can reinforce the importance of these generation technologies making them valuable in electricity markets. In this paper we propose the improvement of MASCEM, a multi-agent simulation tool to study negotiations in electricity spot markets based on different market mechanisms and behavior strategies, in order to take account of decentralized players such as VPP.

Virtual power producers simulation - negotiating renewable distributed generation in competitive electricity markets

Sustainable development concerns made renewable energy sources to be increasingly used for electricity distributed generation. However, this is mainly due to incentives or mandatory targets determined by energy policies as in European Union. Assuring a sustainable future requires distributed generation to be able to participate in competitive electricity markets. To get more negotiation power in the market and to get advantages of scale economy, distributed generators can be aggregated giving place to a new concept: the Virtual Power Producer (VPP). VPPs are multi-technology and multisite heterogeneous entities that should adopt organization and management methodologies so that they can make distributed generation a really profitable activity, able to participate in the market. This paper presents ViProd, a simulation tool that allows simulating VPPs operation, in the context of MASCEM, a multi-agent based eletricity market simulator.

Dispachability improvement of wind generation by the virtual power producers

Nowadays, there is a growing environmental concern about were the energy that we use comes from, bringing the att ention on renewable energies. However, the use and trade of renewable e nergies in the market seem to be complicated because of the lack of guara ntees of generation, mainly in the wind farms. The lack of guarantees is usually addressed by using a reserve generation. The aggregation of DG p lants gives place to a new concept: the Virtual Power Producer (VPP). VPPs can reinforce the importance of wind generation technologies, making them valuable in electricity markets. This paper presents some resul ts obtained with a simulation tool (ViProd) developed to support VPPs in the analysis of their operation and management methods and of their strat egies effects.

MASCEM - an electricity market simulator providing coalition support for virtual power players

This paper presents MASCEM - a multi-agent based electricity market simulator. MASCEM uses game theory, machine learning techniques, scenario analysis and optimization techniques to model market agents and to provide them with decision-support. This paper mainly focus on the MASCEM ability to provide the means to model and simulate Virtual Power Players (VPP). VPPs are represented as a coalition of agents, with specific characteristics and goals. The paper details some of the most important aspects considered in VPP formation and in the aggregation of new producers and includes a case study based on real data.

Active and reactive power control of synchronous generator for the realization of a virtual power plant

This paper presents a novel power control strategy that decouples the active and reactive power for a synchronous generator connected to a power network. The proposed control paradigm considers the capacitance of the transmission line along with its resistance and reactance as-well. Moreover the proposed controller takes into account all cases of R-X relationships, thus allowing it to function in Virtual Power Plant (VPP) structures which operate at both medium voltage (MV) and low voltage (LV) levels. The independent control of active and reactive power is achieved through rotational transformations of the terminal voltages and currents at the synchronous generator's output. This paper details the control technique by first presenting the mathematical and electrical network analysis of the methodology and then successfully implementing the control using MATLAB-SIMULINK simulation.

Universal active and reactive power control of electronically interfaced distributed generation sources in virtual power plants operating in gridconnected and islanding modes

The control paradigms of the distributed generation (DG) sources in the smart grid are realised by either utilising virtual power plant (VPP) or by employing MicroGrid structures. Both VPP and MicroGrid are presented with the problem of control of power flow between their comprising DG sources. This study depicts this issue for VPP and proposes a novel and improved universal active and reactive power flow controllers for three-phase pulse width modulated voltage source inverters (PWM-VSI) operating in the VPP environment. The proposed controller takes into account all cases of R-X relationship, thus allowing it to function in systems operating at high, medium (MV) and low-voltage (LV) levels. Also proposed control scheme for the first time in an inverter control takes into account the capacitance of the transmission line which is an important factor to accurately represent medium length transmission lines. This allows the proposed control scheme to be applied in VPP structures, where DG sources can operate at MV LV levels over a short/medium length transmission line. The authors also conducted small signal stability analysis of the proposed controller and compared it against the small signal study of the existing controllers.

Virtual power players demand response programs management based on locational marginal prices

Power systems have been suffering huge changes mainly due to the substantial increase of distributed generation and to the operation in competitive environments. Virtual power players can aggregate a diversity of players, namely generators and consumers, and a diversity of energy resources, including electricity generation based on several technologies, storage and demand response. Resource management gains an increasing relevance in this competitive context, while demand side active role provides managers with increased demand elasticity. This makes demand response use more interesting and flexible, giving rise to a wide range of new opportunities.This paper proposes a methodology for managing demand response programs in the scope of virtual power players. The proposed method is based on the calculation of locational marginal prices (LMP). The evaluation of the impact of using demand response specific programs on the LMP value supports the manager decision concerning demand response use. The proposed method has been computationally implemented and its application is illustrated in this paper using a 32 bus network with intensive use of distributed generation.

Energy resource scheduling in a real distribution network managed by several virtual power players

Smart Grids (SGs) appeared as the new paradigm for power system management and operation, being designed to integrate large amounts of distributed energy resources. This new paradigm requires a more efficient Energy Resource Management (ERM) and, simultaneously, makes this a more complex problem, due to the intensive use of distributed energy resources (DER), such as distributed generation, active consumers with demand response contracts, and storage units. This paper presents a methodology to address the energy resource scheduling, considering an intensive use of distributed generation and demand response contracts. A case study of a 30 kV real distribution network, including a substation with 6 feeders and 937 buses, is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. This network is managed by six virtual power players (VPP) with capability to manage the DER and the distribution network.

Remuneration and tariffs in the context of virtual power players

Power systems have been through deep changes in recent years, namely with the operation of competitive electricity markets in the scope and the increasingly intensive use of renewable energy sources and distributed generation. This requires new business models able to cope with the new opportunities that have emerged. Virtual Power Players (VPPs) are a new player type which allows aggregating a diversity of players (Distributed Generation (DG), Storage Agents (SA), Electrical Vehicles, (V2G) and consumers), to facilitate their participation in the electricity markets and to provide a set of new services promoting generation and consumption efficiency, while improving players` benefits. A major task of VPPs is the remuneration of generation and services (maintenance, market operation costs and energy reserves), as well as charging energy consumption. This paper proposes a model to implement fair and strategic remuneration and tariff methodologies, able to allow efficient VPP operation and VPP goals accomplishment in the scope of electricity markets.

Virtual power players dealing with excessive wind power situations using real time pricing

The increasing importance given by environmental policies to the dissemination and use of wind power has led to its fast and large integration in power systems. In most cases, this integration has been done in an intensive way, causing several impacts and challenges in current and future power systems operation and planning. One of these challenges is dealing with the system conditions in which the available wind power is higher than the system demand. This is one of the possible applications of demand response, which is a very promising resource in the context of competitive environments that integrates even more amounts of distributed energy resources, as well as new players. The methodology proposed aims the maximization of the social welfare in a smart grid operated by a virtual power player that manages the available energy resources. When facing excessive wind power generation availability, real time pricing is applied in order to induce the increase of consumption so that wind curtailment is minimized. The proposed method is especially useful when actual and day-ahead wind forecast differ significantly. The proposed method has been computationally implemented in GAMS optimization tool and its application is illustrated in this paper using a real 937-bus distribution network with 20310 consumers and 548 distributed generators, some of them with must take contracts.

Distributed generation producers' reserve management

Sustainable development concerns are being addressed with increasing attention, in general, and in the scope of power industry, in particular. The use of distributed generation (DG), mainly based on renewable sources, has been seen as an interesting approach to this problem. However, the increasing of DG in power systems raises some complex technical and economic issues. This paper presents ViProd, a simulation tool that allows modeling and simulating DG operation and participation in electricity markets. This paper mainly focuses on the operation of Virtual Power Producers (VPP) which are producers’ aggregations, being these producers mainly of DG type. The paper presents several reserve management strategies implemented in the scope of ViProd and the results of a case study, based on real data.

LMP based bid formation for virtual power players operating in smart grids

Power system organization has gone through huge changes in the recent years. Significant increase in distributed generation (DG) and operation in the scope of liberalized markets are two relevant driving forces for these changes. More recently, the smart grid (SG) concept gained increased importance, and is being seen as a paradigm able to support power system requirements for the future. This paper proposes a computational architecture to support day-ahead Virtual Power Player (VPP) bid formation in the smart grid context. This architecture includes a forecasting module, a resource optimization and Locational Marginal Price (LMP) computation module, and a bid formation module. Due to the involved problems characteristics, the implementation of this architecture requires the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are used for resource and load forecasting and Evolutionary Particle Swarm Optimization (EPSO) is used for energy resource scheduling. The paper presents a case study that considers a 33 bus distribution network that includes 67 distributed generators, 32 loads and 9 storage units.

MV producers and consumers agents characterization with DSM techniques

This paper consist in the establishment of a Virtual Producer/Consumer Agent (VPCA) in order to optimize the integrated management of distributed energy resources and to improve and control Demand Side Management DSM) and its aggregated loads. The paper presents the VPCA architecture and the proposed function-based organization to be used in order to coordinate the several generation technologies, the different load types and storage systems. This VPCA organization uses a frame work based on data mining techniques to characterize the costumers. The paper includes results of several experimental tests cases, using real data and taking into account electricity generation resources as well as consumption data.