What is a virtual power plant?

In layman's terms, a virtual power plant is a virtualized power plant, the content inside is not a power plant, but it functions as a power plant. In fact, this is also the case, that is, to integrate and regulate relatively scattered elements such as source, network, charge, and storage to form a black box, which is equivalent to a controllable power supply externally. This black box can be used as a "positive power plant" to supply power to the system, or as a "negative power plant" to absorb the power of the system, and play a role in flexible peak shaving and valley filling. It is essentially a "demand side response" for small areas Scheduling (necessary) + controllable load (optional) + energy storage (optional) + distributed power (optional)".

If summed up in a short sentence, the virtual power plant is an "intelligent housekeeper for energy dispatching". Through the virtual power plant, "energy storage coordination" and "where it is not enough to make up for it" are realized.

This is actually a good analogy in other industries, that is, Meituan’s lowest-level rider scheduling and Didi’s vehicle scheduling are distributed micro-grid scheduling in the power grid. It is called a virtual power plant. cavalry".

When you can't figure out the specific content of the new power system and energy Internet, you can look at the word, and if you can't understand it, you can look at "energy storage" and dispatching.

definition of tall

A virtual power plant is a kind of coordination and optimization of DERs, such as DG, energy storage systems, controllable loads, and electric vehicles, through advanced information and communication technology and software systems, so as to participate in power supply coordination and management of power markets and grid operations as a special power plant system.

The core of the virtual power plant concept can be summarized as "communication" and "aggregation". The key technologies of virtual power plants mainly include coordinated control technology, smart metering technology and information communication technology. The most attractive function of the virtual power plant is that it can aggregate DER to participate in the operation of the electricity market and ancillary service market, and provide management and ancillary services for the distribution network and transmission network. The solution idea of "virtual power plant" has a very large market potential in our country, and it is undoubtedly a good choice for China facing "the contradiction between power shortage and low energy efficiency".

key technology

01-Coordinated control technology

The control objects of the virtual power plant mainly include various DGs, energy storage systems, controllable loads and electric vehicles. Since the concept of a virtual power plant emphasizes the functions and effects presented to the outside world, it is the focus and difficulty of the coordinated control of virtual power plants to aggregate and diversify DERs to achieve high-demand power output for the system. In fact, some renewable energy power stations (such as wind power stations and photovoltaic power stations) have the characteristics of intermittent or randomness and prediction errors. Therefore, the influence of uncertainty must be considered in large-scale grid connection. This requires the reasonable cooperation of energy storage system, distributable generator set, and controllable load to ensure power quality and improve power generation economy.

02-Smart metering technology

Smart metering technology is an important part of the virtual power plant and an important basis for realizing the monitoring and control of DG and controllable loads in the virtual power plant. The most basic function of the smart metering system is to automatically measure and read the consumption or production of electricity, gas, heat, and water in the user's residence, that is, automated meter reading (AMR), so as to provide power for the virtual power plant and real-time information on the demand side. As the development of AMR, automatic meter management (AMM) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) can remotely measure real-time user information, manage data reasonably, and send it to relevant parties. For the user, all metering data can be displayed on the computer through the user's home area network (HAN). Therefore, users can intuitively see information such as the electric energy they consume or produce and the corresponding costs, so as to take reasonable adjustment measures.

03-Information and communication technology

The virtual power plant adopts two-way communication technology, which can not only receive the current state information of each unit, but also send control signals to the control target. The communication technologies used in virtual power plants mainly include Internet-based technologies, such as Internet protocol-based services, virtual private networks, power line carrier technologies, and wireless technologies (such as Global System for Mobile Communications/Universal Packet Radio Service (USM/UPRS) wait). In the user's residence, communication technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth, and ZigBee constitute an indoor communication network.