Impact of forecast accuracy on energy management of a virtual power plant

Energy management has always been a crucial issue in efficient operation of energy systems. Recently, application of stochastic distributed energy resources and energy storage units in microgrids has made the energy management problem more complex. This paper focuses on the energy management of a cluster of demands, solar power stations and storage units, which are interconnected through a microgrid. The demands, solar power stations and storage units work as a virtual power plant. To this end, we design an energy management system for making appropriate decisions on the amount of energy that the virtual power plant can buy/sell from/to the main grid, load levels, solar power production and energy storage/production. The energy management system encounters with uncertain main grid prices and available solar power productions, which are modeled through single-point forecast. We analyze through a realistic case study impact of forecast accuracy on decisions made by energy management system as well as impact of considering smart grid technology.