Virtual power plant dispatch optimization using linear programming

Since renewable sources, such as wind and solar power plants, suffer from their stochastic nature, their behavior on market is very delicate. In order to diversify the risk, a concept of virtual power plant is developed. The virtual power plant is consisted of several renewable energy sources and at least one conventional power plant. The production of renewable energy sources cannot be perfectly forecasted, and in order to create a stabile market agent, a conventional power plant is used to produce the electricity when necessary. Therefore, an optimal dispatch schedule within the virtual power plant is needed. To address this problem, a mixed-integer linear programming model is created with goal of minimizing the costs of conventional power plant. It is assumed that virtual power plant has to satisfy the bilateral contracts of electricity delivery within a weekly time horizon on hourly basis. The focus of this paper is the influence of the conventional power plant technical minimum value to overall virtual power plant production costs.