Emission impacts on virtual power plant scheduling programs

A wide range of distributed energy sources can be aggregated under a virtual power plant (VPP) and participate in energy markets as a single power plant. With the advent of multi-energy sources such as combined heat and power (CHP) units, the performance and mechanism of traditional VPPs to participate in energy markets and achieve higher profits increase. On the other hand, emission limitations play a significant role in the flexibility of VPPs to participate in the energy markets. To this end, in this chapter, an emission-constrained optimal self-scheduling model is proposed for the participation of a CHP-based VPP in the electricity wholesale market. The proposed CHP-based VPP is equipped with renewable energy resources, CHP units, power- and heat-based energy storage systems and multi-energy demands. Besides, demand response programs (DRPs) are also considered to increase the flexibility of VPP in the energy markets. A scenario-based stochastic approach is adopted to handle the uncertainties of renewable energy resources, multi-energy demands, and energy prices. Numerical results show the effect of DRPs implementation in the presence of multi-energy storage to achieve maximum profit for a VPP taking into account the emission limit.