How to store batteries in virtual power plants

Continuous energy delivery: Virtual batteries allow the constant delivery of electrical energy at any time and power. Reduced energy costs: By storing surplus solar energy, virtual batteries can reduce long-term electricity costs as users can rely less on grid power and avoid high peak-hour energy prices.

What are virtual power plants and how do they work? A virtual power plant is a system of distributed energy resources—like rooftop solar panels, electric vehicle chargers, and smart water heaters—that work together to balance energy supply and demand on a large scale. They are usually run by local utility companies who oversee this balancing act.

What are virtual batteries? A virtual battery is a solution that revolutionizes the way solar energy is stored and used. Unlike traditional physical batteries, which store electricity in the form of chemical energy, the energy generated by your solar panels is supplied to the electrical grid.

A virtual power plant (VPP), as a combination of dispersed generator units, controllable load and energy storage system (ESS), provides an efficient solution for energy management and scheduling, so as to reduce the cost and network impact caused by the load spikes.

However, one of the main limitations of solar energy is its intermittency and its dependence on weather conditions. This is where virtual batteries are playing a crucial role in the solar energy revolution. Solar energy is a clean, inexhaustible and increasingly affordable source of electricity generation.

This paper proposes a multi-objective optimization (MOO) of battery energy storage system (BESS) for VPP applications. A low-voltage (LV) network in Alice Springs (Northern Territory, Australia) is considered as the test network for this study.