Optimal Coordinated Operation for a Distribution Network With Virtual Power Plants Considering Load Shaping

Increasing load demand and renewable energy resource integration will exacerbate the net load profile by enlarging the peak-to-valley difference. Virtual power plant (VPP) technology presents a promising pathway for the efficient energy management of active distribution networks (ADNs) with large-scale distributed energy resources. This paper proposes a bilevel model for the collaborative operation of an ADN with multiple VPPs in a joint energy-reserve market that is organized by a distribution system operator (DSO). In the upper-level problem, the DSO minimizes the total operational cost of the ADN to set the energy and reserve prices for trading with VPPs while considering the network technical constraints and the load shaping performance with reserve participation. In the lower-level problem, VPPs aim to maximize their profits by adjusting bidding quantities according to the price issued by the DSO. Then, the proposed bilevel model is transformed into a tractable single-level optimization problem via the Karush-Kuhn–Tucker optimality conditions and a sequence of reformulation techniques, and an analytical method is designed to calculate the potential losses. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed approach in shaping the load profile and improving the system operational economy.