Prospects of a virtual power plant to control a cluster of distributed generation and renewable energy sources

The integration of distributed generation (DG) and renewable energy sources (RES) in the passive controlled distribution networks leads in present situation to an expansion of the network capacity and thus to excessive investments. If no measures will be taken these expenditures will increase in proportion to the growth of DG&RES. The virtual power plant (VPP) anticipates these challenges and in addition facilitates better dispatching of power and energy from centralized generation to the DG&RES. The VPP offers a concept for the control and management system of DG&RES that responds to the regulatory and socio-economical constraints beside technical challenges. While most VPP concepts are based on active distribution networks, this work uses the VPP concept to transit the present passive distribution networks to the active networks in the future. For that purpose three transition stages are developed after laying of the foundations for a definition of the VPP with the Dutch situation as an example. To anticipate future developments in the electricity infrastructures, the capability of the VPP to combine with the common known control and management concepts is investigated.