Towards Joint Power-Communication System Modelling and Optimisation for Smart Grid Application: Virtual Power Plant (TOPMOST)

英国的电力网络每天为数百万人服务，但现在面临着一个充满挑战的未来，基础设施日益老化，但可再生能源(RESS)的普及率越来越高。因此，英国天然气和电力市场办公室(Ofgem)已经批准了一项计划，即花费170亿英镑，通过使用更智能的技术，在2023年之前升级英国的电力网络。作为最有前景的解决方案之一，智能电网受到了广泛的关注，因为它能够在电网基础设施中实现能源和通信的双向流动，这对于提高电力系统的可靠性、安全性和效率以及以最小的用户成本保持照明至关重要。这项拟议的研究涉及一个关键的智能电网应用，即虚拟发电厂(VPP)，它旨在聚合多种不同的分布式能源(DER)的能力和灵活的需求，以创建一个单一的运行配置文件，作为一个帮助实时平衡供需的“虚拟发电厂”。为了促进VPP，优化算法和通信技术都起着重要的作用，但由于缺乏联合电力通信系统模型和对通信系统缺陷对优化算法的影响的深入分析，VPP的全部潜力一直受到阻碍。如果成功，本研究将对VPP中这两个密切交互的系统提供更好的理解，为VPP的设计开发更先进的方法，并在Durham智能电网实验室实现具有双向实时通信能力的VPP硬件试验台。这可能会导致对RESS和灵活需求的更有效管理，最终提高系统运营商的电网运营效率，并降低用户的成本。然而，或许最重要的是，这项研究将使我们能够开始思考如何优化智能电网技术的性能，不仅要考虑电力系统，还要考虑现实的通信系统，从而鼓励多学科研究并使这两个领域相互促进。

The UK's electricity networks are serving millions of people everyday but now are facing a challenging future, with ageing infrastructure but increasing penetration of Renewable Energy Sources (RESs). As such, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) has approved plans to spend £17bn for upgrading the UK's electricity networks till 2023 by using smarter technologies. As one of the most promising solutions, smart grid has attracted much attention, since it is capable of enabling bidirectional flows of energy and communications in the power grid infrastructure, that is crucial in improving the reliability, security, and efficiency of the electric systems and keeping the lights on at minimum cost to consumers. The proposed research is concerned with one key smart grid application, i.e., Virtual Power Plant (VPP) which is designed to aggregate the capacity of many diverse distributed energy resources (DERs) and flexible demands to create a single operating profile as one "virtual power plant" that helps balance supply and demand in real time. To facilitate VPP, both optimisation algorithms and communication technologies play a significant role, but the full potential of VPP has been hampered by the lack of joint power-communication system models and the thorough analysis of the impact of communication system imperfections to optimisation algorithms. If successful, this research will provide better understandings of these two systems operating with close interactions in VPP, develop more advanced methods in the design of VPP, and implement a hardware testbed of VPP with two-way real-time communication capability in Durham Smart Grid Laboratory. These could potentially lead to more efficient management of RESs and flexible demands, ultimately to improved operational efficiency of power grids for system operators and to reduced cost for consumers. Perhaps most importantly, however, is that this research will enable us to begin asking how we shall optimise the performance of smart grid technologies, considering not only power systems but also realistic communication systems, thus encouraging multidisciplinary research and cross-fertilising both fields.