A Novel Low Power Network Topology for Virtual Power Plants

In recent years, a new type of power system has emerged in the context of rapid developments in information technology and renewable energy. The future power system will primarily rely on renewable energy sources, leading to increased system uncertainty and a significant demand for system flexibility. Virtual power plants represent an important manifestation of the new power system, and their development is actively promoted worldwide to accelerate the transition of the power industry towards sustainability, intelligence, and flexibility. Low-power wireless access technology is a crucial component of virtual power plants, considering the expected characteristics of the new power system, such as low power consumption and a high number of terminal communication nodes. These characteristics will inevitably impact network architecture and node transmission energy consumption. Therefore, this research, conducted in the context of virtual power plants, introduces a novel low-power network topology for access technology. This access technology is based on an improvement of the ZigBee and BLE-MESH network topology, with network nodes in the network consisting of terminal nodes and relay nodes. Relay nodes possess two network interfaces, where one interfaces with other terminal nodes to form a self-organizing network, while the other interfaces with other relay nodes to establish long-distance, high-bandwidth communication networks. This study contributes to the development of virtual power plants, enhances the reliability of power energy systems, and improves the scalability of virtual power plants. Through simulation, the proposed network technology solution in this paper can effectively meet the low-power communication access requirements of virtual power plants, offering significant practical and research value for the virtual power plant domain. Furthermore, this research has the potential to advance the development of new power systems and plays a catalytic role in the research and development of power system access technology for these innovative systems.