A Brief Discussion on the Current Status and Prospects of Virtual Power Plant Technology

Jiangsu Ankerui Electric Appliance Manufacturing Co., Ltd. Jiangyin 214405, Jiangsu

Abstract:In the new era environment, people's demand for electricity energy is constantly increasing. In order to meet people's electricity needs, more and more power supply systems and power engineering are developing rapidly. On the one hand, this has promoted the development of the power industry, but on the other hand, it has also led to an increase in the difficulty of managing the power market. In order to achieve high-quality and efficient management and services in the electricity market, virtual power plants have gradually been developed and used. This article analyzes the current status of virtual power plant technology and proposes prospects for its development, in order to gain a deeper understanding of this technology.

Keywords:Virtual power plant; Technical Status and Prospects

0 Introduction

In recent years, virtual power plants have received widespread attention and research in the industry. They utilize information and communication technology as well as software systems to effectively aggregate energy resources such as distributed power generation, controllable loads, and energy storage systems. In virtual power plants, key technologies include coordinated control technology, information communication technology, and intelligent metering technology, which provide modern management and auxiliary services for distribution and transmission networks. This technology has been rapidly developing and has achieved certain results, but it has enormous potential for development and still needs to be continuously strengthened in research.

1. Overview of Virtual Power Plant Technology

The proposal of virtual power plants has been around for more than ten years, and a series of project studies have been carried out in countries such as North America and North America, such as the Dutch power matching device and FENIX project. At present, there is no unified opinion on the definition of virtual power plants. According to the characteristics of virtual power plant operation, it can be summarized as the aggregation of distributed energy sources such as wind power, electric vehicles, photovoltaic power generation, and energy storage through metering, control, and communication, and unified participation in the scheduling of the power system and the operation of the power market. The price signal of the power market is used as the driving force, and the control measures are used to coordinate distributed energy and conflicts in the power grid, improve the performance of the distributed energy grid, promote energy utilization efficiency and cleanliness improvement.

Through virtual power plants, it is possible to flexibly integrate various distributed energy sources with electrical connections in the region, comprehensively implement the functional characteristics of various distributed energy operations, and achieve optimization effects on the configuration of these distributed energy sources. By utilizing virtual power plants, relevant operators can effectively integrate the power generation and controllable energy consumption of thermal, wind, hydro, and photovoltaic systems on the user side, and distribute and transmit electricity to users in a timely manner.

2. Analysis of the causes of arc short circuit faults in medium and low voltage switchgear

2.1 Current situation of foreign development

In the early 21st century, research on virtual power plants began in Europe and America, with the main goal of effectively integrating gradually increasing distributed power generation and reducing its impact on the overall power grid. There are many participating countries in this technology research, mainly the United States, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark and other developed countries. There are different directions in researching virtual power plants, which can be mainly divided into two categories. One is the technology roadmap represented by the European Union's FENIX project, which studies how distributed power plants can achieve grid connection and electricity market operation. The main purpose is to enable distributed power plants to participate more fully, safely and efficiently in the electricity market; Another type of technological representative is the United States, which pays more attention to demand response plans and the utilization of renewable energy, with the main goal of achieving a dynamic and real-time balance between supply and demand.

2.2 Current situation of domestic development

In 2015, the State Council of China issued relevant documents, which emphasized the importance of "Internet plus", defined it as a form of deep integration of Internet achievements and various social fields, and required to actively promote technological progress, organizational change and efficiency improvement, promote the innovation and productivity of the real economy, so as to form a new form of social and economic development based on the Internet. The effective combination of the Internet and smart energy is to promote the revolution of energy production and consumption mode, which is of great significance to improve the efficiency of energy utilization, achieve the effect of energy conservation and emission reduction, and improve the security and stability of the power system. The technology of virtual power plant is the integration of the Internet and energy management.

At present, virtual power plants have been put into operation in the power grids of some developed countries such as Europe and America. They are also projects operated based on market-oriented methods in China and have been officially put into commercial operation. The operation of this project relies on the platform of ubiquitous electricity, which has second level sensing, storage, and computing capabilities, and can effectively control the investment in power generation, supply, transmission, and other links. In the first phase of the project, widely adjustable resources such as real-time controlled thermal storage electric heating, intelligent buildings, adjustable industrial and commercial, energy storage, intelligent homes, distributed photovoltaic and electric vehicle charging stations were integrated, with a capacity of approximately 160MW. With the help of the peak shaving auxiliary market of North China Power, in 2020, the summer air conditioning load of the power grid in northern Hebei reached 6000MW, and 10% of the air conditioning load was responded to in real time through virtual power plants; And the load of thermal storage electric heating can be responded to in real time through virtual power plants, achieving the increase of 720 GW · h clean energy and the reduction of 636500 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

In Huangpu District, Shanghai, a pilot project of "Virtual Power Plant for Commercial Buildings" has been established. With the help of communication and control technologies, the load reduction capacity of a large number of electrical equipment is treated as virtual output, and this capacity is connected to the virtual generator set of the system as the load side of the applied electricity, achieving participation in market and grid operation. This project implements the construction of a flexible load response system, which is in the peak electricity consumption period of winter and summer. This system can flexibly adjust the preset temperature, air supply volume, and fan speed parameters of the central air conditioning in commercial buildings, reducing the electricity load to the energy released by the power grid. At the same time, flexible load control can also utilize the heat storage capacity of air-conditioned rooms during low electricity consumption periods to adjust a large number of characteristic parameters, increase air conditioning load, and store a portion of the cooling capacity in advance, thereby increasing the utilization rate of the power system.

3. Prospects for Virtual Power Plant Technology

In the research of virtual power plant technology, although there are different characteristics and diverse control methods at home and abroad, the core technologies of the industry are basically similar, mainly including metering technology, communication technology, intelligent scheduling decision-making technology, information security protection technology, etc. In the subsequent research and development, it still needs to be focused on,

In terms of measurement technology, it is necessary to achieve an accurate energy network for the consumption of electricity, gas, heat, water, and other resources on the user side, ensuring a balance between supply and demand, and providing accurate basis for the scheduling and production of this technology.

In terms of communication technology, the control center first needs to receive information on the status of each subsystem, information on the power user side, and information on the power market, and then make decisions, optimizations, and schedules based on such information. At this stage, technologies such as the Internet, power cable carrier and virtual network are mainly used. Later, virtual power plant communication protocols and general platforms will be developed based on these technologies.

In terms of decision-making technology for intelligent scheduling, virtual power plants need to achieve distributed energy consumption and ensure efficient and safe operation of the power grid, which requires them to coordinate and optimize the scheduling of various subsystems. Therefore, its control center still needs to continuously improve mathematical models and optimization algorithms.

In terms of information security protection technology, a virtual power plant is a large-scale system that integrates many subsystems, and it has interfaces with each subsystem. This requires good security protection for its system, as well as strengthened protection capabilities for boundary protection and internal security. Based on the current development status and needs, it is necessary to strengthen the research on information security technology that is compatible with virtual power plants, which is also an important aspect to be emphasized in the future development of virtual power plants

4. Ankerui Enterprise Microgrid Energy Efficiency Management System Hardware Equipment

Ankrui has an energy Internet "cloud edge end" product ecosystem. Terminal equipment includes intelligent gateways, high and low voltage power distribution comprehensive protection and monitoring products, online power quality monitoring devices, power quality governance, itemized metering, lighting control, new energy charging piles, electrical fire protection solutions, etc., which can provide one-stop service capabilities for the enterprise's micro grid energy efficiency system.

5. Conclusion

In summary, in order to better promote the development of the electricity market, the research on virtual power plant technology has gradually received attention. Corresponding pilot research projects have also been established for virtual power plants both domestically and internationally, and have achieved certain results. In order to promote the better application of their technology, it is necessary to continuously deepen research on their technology, so as to achieve better functionality and application.

References:

[1] Current Status and Prospects of Virtual Power Plant Technology, Zhang Jiaxu

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[3] Research on the Comprehensive Energy Technology Route [J]. Yang Xiaosi, Tao Xinlei Huadian Technology 2019(11)

[4] Application of virtual power plants in large-scale wind power grid connection [J]. Zhang Xiaomin Electric power construction 2011(09)

[5] Ankerui Enterprise Microgrid Design and Application Manual 2022.05 Edition