Modeling and Aggregating DER Flexibility Region in VPPs
An Elimination and Projection Approach
C. Li (Tsinghua University, TU Delft - Intelligent Electrical Power Grids)
Kedi Zheng (Tsinghua University)
Cheng Feng (Tsinghua University)
Qixin Chen (Tsinghua University)
P.P. Barrios (TU Delft - Intelligent Electrical Power Grids)
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Abstract
The power generation and consumption of distributed energy resources (DERs) offer significant flexibility potential, which can be utilized to provide services such as peak and frequency regulation. DERs introduce a vast number of variables and constraints, making it complicated to directly integrate them into upper-level dispatch. To address this challenge, virtual power plants (VPPs) emerge, which treat diverse DERs as a collective entity and use aggregated flexibility envelopes to reduce the variable and constraint scale, facilitating upper-level optimization. In VPPs, unified DER modeling and efficient DER aggregation play a crucial role but are challenging. This paper first introduces a novel unified polytope model to represent heterogenous DERs' flexibility region. A coordination transformation is utilized to eliminate redundant variable dimensions and maintain DERs' interface characteristics. A sample-based projection method is then developed, further removing all state variables, resulting in a unified flexibility region. This method is then utilized to calculate the Minkowski sums of individual flexibility polytopes for aggregation. The results of numerical tests demonstrate a considerable reduction in computation time and maintain satisfactory accuracy when the proposed modeling and aggregation approach is adopted.