1

Optimal Power Scheduling in a Virtual Power Plant

Davide Aloini, Emanuele Crisostomi, Marco Raugi and Rocco Rizzo

AbstractThis paper proposes a novel approach where the

Energy Management System of a Virtual Power Plant decides
the optimal power scheduling not on the basis of some predefined
policies, but upon the solution of an optimisation problem. The
scheduling decision is dynamic as it depends on variable factors,
not fully predictable, such as renewable sources availability,
electrical energy price, controllable and uncontrollable loads
demand and possibility of storing or releasing stored energy. The
optimal solution is computed according to a novel cost function
that explicitly takes into account only direct costs. Theoretical
findings and expectations are proved through simulations of a
realistic scenario.
Index TermsVirtual Power Plant, Linear Programming,
Power Scheduling.

I. I NTRODUCTION
NSURING an efficient and sustainable use of natural
resources is one of the most critical challenges that
Europe is facing today [1]. The renovation of the actual energy
infrastructure should reflect this thinking, as envisaged by the
Smart Grid concept. A Smart Grid is an electricity network
that can cost efficiently integrate the behaviour and actions
of all users connected to it (e.g., generators, consumers and
those that do both) in order to ensure economically efficient,
sustainable power system with low losses and high levels of
quality and security of supply and safety [2].

The integration of all the connected users is of paramount

importance in microgrids and Virtual Power Plants (VPPs),
which, at different geographic and/or power scale, are
an aggregate of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs).
As illustrated in Figure 1, a VPP includes conventional
generators and renewable energy sources, controllable loads
and storage systems. For simplicity, in the remainder of the
paper, the context will be limited to a VPP, but the same
theory can be applied to microgrids as well. The Energy
Management System (EMS) represents the core of the VPP,
and is responsible of all decisions within the VPP.
This paper proposes the use of a utility function, namely the
direct costing function [3], to facilitate the integration of the
diverse participants in the VPP. In practice, on the basis of
actual energy prices and availability of stochastic resources,
such as wind and solar energy, the EMS decides
how much energy should be produced;
which generators should contribute to the production of
the required energy;
whether surplus energy should be produced and then
stored or sold;
Authors are with the Department of Energy and Systems Engineering, University of Pisa, Largo L. Lazzarino, Pisa, Italy e-mail:
emanuele.crisostomi@gmail.com.

Fig. 1. A Virtual Power Plant aggregates Distributed Energy Resources (e.g.,

solar plants, combined heat and power plants), uncontrollable and controllable
loads (e.g., a city, an industrial area) and storage systems (e.g., hydro-power
pumps, electric vehicles). The VPP is connected to the smart grid.

whether (and in case how many and which) controllable

loads should be disconnected;
whether electrical energy should be sold/bought to/from
the grid.
A closely related problem has been addressed in the literature in references [4] and [5], where a static optimal
solution was found. A static approach was also proposed in
[6] to evaluate the use of particular storage systems. A typical
example of static optimisation is the rule-driven EMS, which
takes decisions according to predefined policies, as for instance
if there is electrical power surplus, then sell the extra
energy to the grid;
if the electrical power surplus is greater than the network
transfer capacity, then use the unsold energy to drive
ancillary services.
On the other hand, here we take into account dynamic aspects
such as energy price and stochastic resource availability
fluctuations, which give rise to dynamic time variant policies.
In [7], the authors propose the use of the abstract concept
of Power Node to represent a variety of components in a
unified framework (e.g., the VPP), for the assessment of
energy-storage-based operation strategies for power systems.
The aggregation idea is similar to the one proposed here,
but in [7] the authors solve a different problem (i.e., do
not decide which generator should produce the required
energy and do not use a costing utility function). Finally,
we remind other related references such as [8], where the
optimal scheduling of hydrothermal power generation is
considered, and [9], where the optimal scheduling of a VPP is
solved through the use of a full costing optimisation approach.

or leaving a specific industry, etc. In this scenario, several

approaches (both financial and non financial) are available in
the decision making literature, and absorptive (or full) costing
methodology is usually adopted.

Fig. 2. Short-run vs long-run decisions. In a mixed scenario both kinds of

decisions can be taken (for instance to upgrade an existing plant or to change
the production configuration).

In this paper we focus on the development of the EMS,

bringing the following main contributions to the state-of-theart:
implementation of the EMS as an optimisation algorithm;
novel scheduling of power flows, to minimise a cost
function which only takes into account direct costs (shortrun approach);
development of a more realistic and detailed case study,
to support the theoretical findings.
The paper is organised as follows: next section describes
two classic production cost functions, reviews conventional
cost functions in the VPP literature and explains the direct
cost function used in the remainder of the paper. Section III
illustrates in detail the optimisation algorithm adopted by the
EMS to find the optimal scheduling of power. Section IV
describes the results of the optimal algorithm in a one-day case
study. Finally, the last section summarises the contributions of
this paper and outlines current and future work that will follow
the paper.
II. E NERGY

PRODUCTION COST FUNCTIONS

Optimal management of a VPP requires both short-run and

long-run decisions, as summarised in Figure 2.
The short-run is a time period in which some production
factors are fixed. Fixed costs, such as those due to the existing
plant instalment and annual Operation and Maintenance
(O&M) costs, do not have a significant impact on firms
short-run decisions, as only variable costs and revenues affect
profits. In Economic literature, short-run decision making is
usually analysed using a direct (marginal) costing approach.
For example, the firm increases production if marginal cost is
less than marginal revenue; decreases production if marginal
cost is greater than marginal revenue; continues producing
if average variable cost is less than price per unit, even if
average total cost is greater than price, and shuts down if
average variable cost is greater than price at each level of
output [3].
On the contrary, in the long-run period all the production
factors are considered as variable. Typical long-run decisions
include investment decisions (e.g., plant upgrade), entering

Therefore, an appropriate cost function must be carefully

chosen to reflect the decisional scenario of interest. For
instance, in the VPP literature, some authors compute the
electric production costs using a quadratic function (see for
instance [9])
(1)
C (Ee ) = Ee2 + Ee +
where C is the hourly cost in Currency Unit (C.U.) per hour,
Ee is the generated active power in M W , and , and are
coefficients of appropriate measurement unit that depend on
the technology (e.g., fuel cost, efficiency, etc). Equation (1)
is a cost function related to a full costing approach, although
it is not always applicable as production coefficients are not
usually available in the form required by (1).
Alternatively, a popular way to express cost functions is
the so-called Levelised Costs Of Electricity (LCOE) form,
which can be used to compare different technologies, see for
instance [12] for a thorough comparison, and [4] or [5] for
VPP applications. In this case
P Investt +O&Mt +F uelt +Carbt +Decommt
LCOE =

(1+r)t
Electrt
t (1+r)t

(2)

where Electrt is the amount of electricity produced in the

t
year t, (1 + r) is the discount factor for year t (r is also
called discount rate), and the terms at the numerator represent
investment costs, O&M costs, fuel costs, carbon costs and
decommissioning costs in the year t. Equation (2) is again
a cost function related to a full-costing approach, and it is
required to predict the power plant lifetime to compute it.
Although coefficients to compute (2) can be easily found in
the literature, such an equation is useful to evaluate whether
it is convenient to build or change the configuration of a
whole plant (or a part of it). While such an approach has
been particularly useful in the past years when many new
DERs have been installed, now a short-run scenario is also
very attractive for two main reasons: (a) fixed costs vary from
country to country, due to the instalment incentives given
by local governments to encourage the use of renewable
resources. Therefore results of (2) might not always be
generalisable; (b) many DERs already exist, and therefore it
makes sense to design a scheduling algorithm that optimises
the already available resources.
For the previous reasons, in this paper we deal with
the optimal operation of a VPP in a short-run scenario. In
particular, we make the assumption that the VPP configuration
is fixed and all operating plants are already available. In this
scenario, the VPP production costs are only evaluated by
a direct costing approach: we do not take fixed costs into
account (e.g., investment costs or yearly maintenance costs),
but only variable (or marginal) costs (e.g., fuel/carbon costs,
variable maintenance costs). According to this information,

the EMS decides the VPP optimal production scheduling:

which plant operates in each time period, market opportunity
of buying/selling to the grid (i.e., make or buy decision),
drive/disconnect controllable loads, etc.
III. T HE OPTIMAL

METHODOLOGY

The optimisation algorithm is explained through a case

study, to improve the clarity of the presentation; the investigated scenario consists of (a) three distributed energy
resources, i.e., a photovoltaic (PV) plant, a wind (W) farm
and a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) unit; (b) two storage
systems, i.e., a small pumped hydro storage and 10 low-speed
flywheels; (c) controllable and uncontrollable loads; and (d)
the grid, from which the EMS can buy/sell energy. Details of
the single instalments are given in the following subsection.
A. Simulation scenario
1) Distributed Energy Resources: The configuration of
the case study was inspired by the one proposed in reference
[4]; accordingly, we assume that three DERs are available: a
solar PV plant, a wind farm and a CHP.
PV: We consider the data of an Italian Solar PV characterised
by a Net Capacity of 6M W , a capacity factor of 16%,
variable O&M costs equal to 36.68e/M W h (from [12]).
Constraints are due to the solar energy profile.
Wind plant: We consider the data of a French Onshore
wind characterised by a Net Capacity of 45M W , a capacity
factor of 27%, variable O&M costs equal to 14.00e/M W h
(from [12]).
CHP: We consider the data of an American simple gas
turbine CHP characterised by a Net Electrical Capacity of
40M W , a capacity factor of 85%, variable O&M costs equal
to 0.73e/M W h and 54.41e/M W h for fuel and carbon costs
(from [12]). We assume that the CHP is able to modulate its
production up to 2M W h every hour.

2) Storage systems: Energy storage systems are expected

to mitigate the irregularities of power fluctuations due to
renewable resources, and their utilisation in the Smart Grid
is being encouraged. See for instance reference [13] for a
comprehensive overview of current and (expected) future
energy storage technologies. In this work we consider a small
pumped hydro storage and low-speed flywheels.
Small pumped hydro: Pumped hydro storages are already at
a commercial level, they can provide large power, O&M
costs are low and expected lifetimes are large (of the order of
decades). On the other hand, they are slower (of the order of
seconds-minutes), they can not provide small power and are
less efficient than other commercially available technologies
(lead-acid batteries). In this case-study we assume a Net
Capacity of 10M W , a capacity factor of 70% and variable
O&M costs equal to 2.58e/M W h (from [13]).

Low-speed flywheel: Main advantages of flywheels are

that they have an extremely fast dynamic response, a long
life, require little maintenance and are environmentally
friendly [13]. The main disadvantage is that they are able to
provide high power capacities only for very short time periods.
Here we consider variable costs equal to 2.78e/M W h, a
90% efficiency and a Net Capacity of 1650kW with a
discharge cycle of 120 s.

3) Controllable and uncontrollable loads: Industrial

areas, cities and ancillary services belong to the category of
controllable and uncontrollable loads.
Uncontrollable loads: We consider here uncontrollable
loads as the set of loads that the VPP guarantees to serve,
eventually buying energy from the electrical grid to meet the
demand.
Controllable loads: Controllable loads represent the set
of loads that the VPP reserves to disconnect, likely as a
consequence of an agreement with the buyer. The idea is
that if the VPP has problems in satisfying the electrical
demand and it is not convenient to buy electricity from the
grid because in that moment prices are high, then it can
disconnect the controllable loads. As there are many examples
of controllable loads inside industries, within single houses,
etc., here we model controllable loads in a general way as a
time variant subset of the overall load, on average the 20%
of the uncontrollable loads. Controllable loads are further
detailed and subdivided into three classes according to their
priority.

4) The Electrical Grid: In this regard we make a

simplifying assumption of a perfect market, i.e.: the VPP is
allowed to sell and buy energy from the grid at the same
price, which we will denote as pgrid . Thinking of the future
Smart Grid as an Internet-like model, this assumption might
not be far from reality (routers do not consider preferential
paths when they physically dispatch Internet packets in the
web). Anyway, this is a common assumption in this topic.
For the sake of the simulation scenario, we consider two
different price graphics depicted with a solid line in Figure 3,
which correspond to two day prices of the electricity market
in Italy (in e/M W h) [14] (namely March 24 and 25, 2011).
We assume that the Net Transfer Capacity (NTC) is 15M W ,
in agreement with the case study of [4]. The first day is used
as a historical database for the following day.

5) Energy Management System: The EMS is the central

entity that decides how much energy should be produced (if
possible), how much must be stored or released, how much
must be bought or sold to the grid and whether controllable
loads should be driven or disconnected. As anticipated in the
previous sections, the EMS will not decide upon predefined

policies, but will take a decision upon the solution of an

optimisation problem. In the following, we assume that a new
optimal scheduling vector is computed every half-an-hour; this
discretisation step can however be increased or decreased,
depending on the particular case (mainly, data availability and
promptness to modulate).
B. The optimisation algorithm
We assume that every 30 minutes the EMS will compute the
energy (in M W h) that will be produced/sold/bought/supplied
by each of the VPP components, as the result of the optimisation problem (3):
min

pwEw + pP V EP V + pCHP ECHP +

fw
hy
+pgridEstorage
+ pgridEstorage
+ pgridEgrid +
1
1
2
2
3
pCLECL pCLECL p3CLECL

Ew + EP V + ECHP +

fw
hy

Estorage
+ Estorage
+ Egrid =
+E

1
2
3

E
+
E
+
E
+
ECL
UL

CL
CL

E w Ew E w
E P V EP V E P V
subject to

E CHP ECHP E CHP

fw

w
fw

E fstorage
Estorage
E storage

hy

hy

E hy

storage Estorage E storage

N T C/1h Egrid N T C/1h

i
0 < ECL
< E CL ,
i = 1, 2, 3

(3)
In the optimisation problem (3), E indicates energies, while
p stands for prices; prices and energies change every 30
minutes, but dependence on the time step has been dropped
for simplicity; the unknowns have been represented with
bold terms to improve readability; in practice, energies
are the unknowns, and as time steps are fixed, this is
equivalent to saying that powers are the unknowns; the
known terms are however known only at the same time step
the optimisation problem is solved (prices are not predicted);
the terms w, P V , CHP , CL, U L, f w and hy refer to
wind, photovoltaic, Combined Heat and Power, Controllable
Loads, Uncontrollable Loads, flywheel and pumped hydro
respectively; the utility function is a direct costing function:
therefore energy production terms appear with a positive
sign; the sign of the storage systems can be positive (energy
is released) or negative (energy is stored); the sign of the
energy exchanged with the grid (Egrid ) is positive if energy
is bought and negative if sold; controllable loads have a
negative sign to make it attractive for the EMS to drive them
(if possible). The equality constraint is given by the power
balance (energy produced, released from storage systems or
bought from the grid must equal to that used to drive all
loads plus eventual energy that might be stored or sold to the
grid).
The first three inequality constraints represent the minimum
and maximum production of energy from each distributed
resource, upper/lower bounds indicated with upper/lower bars.

Fig. 3. The storage is not used when the electricity prices are included
between the two horizontal lines. Storage can be released when prices are
high (above the upper line) and can be stored when prices are low (below the
bottom line). The example depicted in the figure refers to the pumped hydro
storage.

Bounds are given by the (stochastic) availability of wind/solar

energy, by the net capacity of the plant and by the energy
production in the last time interval (energy production can not
be modulated arbitrarily). Similarly, the bounds of the storage
systems are both given by the capacity of the storages, and by
whether the storage systems is full or empty at a given time.
The energy exchanged with the grid has bounds arising from
the Network Transfer Capacity (NTC, expressed in M W ).
The controllable loads have been prioritised in three categories
(the smallest number 1 implying the highest priority), so that
the EMS knows which category of controllable loads should
be disconnected if not enough energy is produced, and it
is too expensive to buy extra energy from the grid to run them.
While the prices associated with energy production have been
explained in detail in Section II and the exact numerical values
have been given in paragraph III-A, a further discussion is
required to explain the prices associated with the storage
systems and the controllable loads.
1) The price of storage systems: In principle, a storage
system brings an income to the EMS if energy is stored when
energy production is cheap and is released when energy becomes expensive. As the EMS takes autonomous decisions in
real-time, we propose a simple mechanism to decide whether
energy is cheap or expensive, based on a historical price
database, for instance, energy prices of the month/week/day
before. In this paper, we use the energy prices of the day
before to compute a threshold price p , namely the average
price of electricity when it is under its average price. Then,
at every time step, which we remind is every 30 minutes, we
set the bounds of the storage system as

E hy

storage = 5M W h if pgrid p and no full

E hy
if pgrid > p or full storage
storage = 0M W h
hy

E storage = 5M W h

E hy
storage = 0M W h

if pgrid 1 p and no empty

if pgrid < 1 p or empty storage

(4)
where as usual pgrid is the actual price of electricity. Equations
(4) refer to the pumped hydro storage, with efficiency = 0.7,

as previously stated. The interpretation of (4) is that if actual

prices of electricity are low and the storage is not full, or if
actual prices are high and the storage is not empty, then the
Estorage plays an active role in the optimisation problem, and
energy can be respectively stored or released. In any other
case, E storage = E storage = 0, and therefore the storing
system can not be used. Low prices are grid prices below
the threshold price p ; high prices (i.e., when pgrid > 1/p
from (4)) are computed as a function of low prices and of the
efficiency of the storage system, so that it is guaranteed that
there will be a gain when electrical energy is released and sold
(apart from variable O&M costs). Similar equations are used
for the flywheel storage system, with its appropriate parameter
values.
2) Prioritisation of controllable loads: The controllable
loads are those loads that the EMS can disconnect to improve its cost function. For instance, if not enough energy
is produced by the renewable sources and it is too expensive to buy extra energy from the grid, the EMS simply
disconnects some loads. This mechanism is also known as
automatic load control, and aims at influencing the customers
demand behaviour in a coercive way. If applied correctly to
some devices, e.g., to electrical heat pumps, the majority of
consumers will not even notice any interference into the usual
operating sequence [10]. Several approaches have been used
in the literature to model Controllable Loads, see for instance
the neural network model proposed in [11], here we assume
that the most important controllable loads are associated with a
higher price p1CL . Therefore, if not enough energy is available
to run all the controllable loads, the EMS disconnects the loads
that provide the smallest income and runs the most convenient
ones, i.e., those belonging to category 1. Similarly to the case
of storage systems, we use historical data to associate a price
with each category of controllable loads, namely the 25, 50
and 75 percentile of the energy prices (i.e., in the past time
window, 25 %, 50 % and 75 % of the time, the energy price
was below the corresponding value). Every day, thresholds are
updated accordingly.
C. Properties of the optimisation problem
The optimisation problem (3) is characterised by an objective function and constraints that are linear in the unknowns
(as can be seen by visual inspection as the unknowns are in
bold fonts). Therefore, the solution can be easily (and quickly)
computed adopting standard linear programming techniques.
The only unusual aspect of the optimisation problem is that the
unknown Estorage term for the pumped hydro does not vary in
a continuous domain, but every time interval it can only take
the two extreme values (i.e., either 5 and 0, or 0 and 5, or
simply 0 as in (4)). As linear programming techniques usually
work for continuous domains, this problem was circumvented
by solving two different optimisation problems for the extreme values of the pumped hydro storage system and then
choosing the minimum one. Therefore, conventional linear
programming techniques can be adopted, and here we used the
Matlab function linprog. The method converges to a minimum
point (and for linear constrained problems all minimum points

are global minima), provided that the feasible region is not

empty. An empty feasible region may be caused by the fact
that the energy produced by the DERs plus the maximum
energy bought from the grid plus the stored energy, even after
disconnecting the controllable loads, is not enough to satisfy
the uncontrollable loads. In that case, prioritised emergency
procedures can be designed to disconnect uncontrollable loads,
but this scenario is not investigated in this paper. On average
it takes less than 1 ms to solve the optimisation problem.
IV. C ASE

STUDY SIMULATION

The previous scenario is now simulated using Matlab software. At the beginning, we assume to have a half-full pumpedhydro storage and empty flywheels; results are summarised in
Table I and in Figure 4. We remark that the negative values of
the energy in the table and in the figure should be interpreted as
energy sold (in contraposition to energy bought) and energy
stored (in contraposition to energy released). The following
results are extracted from the simulation:
renewable resources are always 100% exploited, because
they are convenient as they do not require carbon/fuel
costs;
at some particular moments (i.e., night time), the EMS
buys (or sells less) energy from (to) the grid as it is
cheaper than using the CHP; CHP production is thus
reduced during off-peak hours and is fully restored during on-peak hours, always according to its modulating
capabilities;
controllable loads are connected/disconnected according
to their priority, i.e., it never happens that the EMS
satisfies less relevant loads and disconnects the important
ones; moreover controllable loads are correctly connected
approximately 3/4, 1/2 and 1/4 of the day, according to
their priorities;
flywheels provide a limited quantity of energy, as they
work for a short time; in the proposed scenario they
are not fully exploited, as decisions are taken every 30
minutes, which is a large time scale compared to their
discharge cycle. It is known that flywheels should be
used for peak shaving purposes, but in the simulation the
EMS found it convenient to use them also to have small
incomes. The flywheels are not used in the afternoon
as they have been completely discharged and electricity
prices are not low enough to spend money to recharge
them again.
V. C ONCLUSIONS
This paper proposed a new solution to the power scheduling
problem, through the optimisation algorithm (3). The optimisation problem can be solved easily using linear programming
techniques (e.g., it takes approximately 1 ms to solve the
problem using linprog command in Matlab), and convergence
issues are not a problem (all local minima are global minima).
After solving the optimisation problem, the EMS finds the
optimal power flow values, and decides
how much energy should be produced and by whom (e.g.,
by the CHP rather than by the PV plant);

TABLE I
E VERY HALF AN HOUR POWER SCHEDULING OF THE VPP.

Time
0.00
0.30
1.00
1.30
2.00
2.30
3.00
3.30
4.00
4.30
5.00
5.30
6.00
6.30
7.00
7.30
8.00
8.30
9.00
9.30
10.00
10.30
11.00
11.30
12.00
12.30
13.00
13.30
14.00
14.30
15.00
15.30
16.00
16.30
17.00
17.30
18.00
18.30
19.00
19.30
20.00
20.30
21.00
21.30
22.00
22.30
23.00
23.30
24.00

Wind
MW
19.04
21.47
20.97
19.17
17.45
17.37
17.43
17.44
16.86
16.90
17.11
16.50
15.79
16.15
16.69
16.36
15.50
15.30
15.23
14.60
14.17
14.35
14.67
13.73
12.37
11.28
10.54
10.93
10.33
8.97
7.75
6.78
5.62
5.44
5.01
4.85
5.26
6.24
6.93
7.25
7.79
7.42
7.12
6.97
6.96
7.45
8.18
8.42
8.60

PV
MW
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.27
0.54
0.81
1.06
1.29
1.51
1.72
1.89
2.05
2.19
2.29
2.36
2.41
2.43
2.42
2.36
2.28
2.18
2.05
1.89
1.71
1.51
1.29
1.05
0.80
0.54
0.27
0.01
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00

CHP
MW
34.00
34.00
33.25
34.00
33.00
32.00
31.00
30.00
29.00
28.00
27.00
26.00
25.00
26.00
27.00
28.00
29.00
30.00
31.00
32.00
33.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00
34.00

Grid
MW
-15.00
-14.02
-15.00
-9.77
-1.35
-5.34
-9.03
-11.38
-12.58
-5.55
-12.92
3.32
-5.35
-2.75
-0.88
0.88
-0.15
5.20
-7.16
-2.62
-1.93
-4.07
-6.97
-9.11
0.19
0.39
1.50
1.58
4.05
3.51
4.88
2.66
7.74
10.48
7.94
9.37
8.26
7.63
-1.12
4.65
4.91
0.83
6.95
3.58
8.00
3.90
10.69
1.30
-0.57

March 25
Pumped hydro storage
MW
0
0
0
0
-10
-10
-10
0
0
-10
0
-10
0
0
0
0
0
0
10
10
10
10
10
10
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
10
10
10
10
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

whether surplus energy should be stored, or stored energy

should be supplied to the grid/loads and by which storage
system (i.e., either use the small pumped hydro or the
flywheels);
whether energy should be bought or sold from the grid;
which
controllable
loads
should
be
connected/disconnected;
what is the actual dynamic priority of actions (e.g.,
whether at a particular moment it is more important to
buy or to release energy, to drive not important loads or
to store,...).

The algorithm was presented in detail, and extensively illustrated through a case study; of course, it can be applied to

Flywheel storage
MW
0
0
0
0
-19.87
-9.06
-3.15
-0.44
-0.18
-0.19
-0.04
-0.03
-0.02
0
13.69
8.62
4.71
3.09
2.31
0.43
0.05
0.06
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

CL1
%
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
0
100
100
100
0
0
0
0
100
100
100
100
100
100
100

CL2
%
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
100
100
100
100
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
100
100
100
100
100

CL3
%
100
0
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
100
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

compute the optimal power management in any other example

of VPP or microgrid. The optimisation utility function is
a direct cost function, as in typical short-run scenarios, as
motivated in Section II. The algorithm is also tested in a
realistic detailed scenario.
The algorithm can be further improved and made more realistic by considering thermal requirements, which would pose
further constraints on the energy provided by the CHP, and by
predicting future profile of DER productions and electrical grid
prices; predictions can then be easily included in the algorithm
(3) by appropriately extending the optimisation horizon. A
further future work will also consider Electric Vehicles as a
particular category of controllable loads [15].

7
30

40
CHP
35

Wind
25

PV
30
Energy [MWh]

Energy [MWh]

20

15

25
20
15

10
Uncontrollable Loads
Driven Controllable Loads, priority 1
Driven Controllable Loads, priority 2
Driven Controllable Loads, priority 3
Disconnected Controllable Loads

10
5
5
0
00.00

04.00

08.00
12.00
16.00
Hour of the day

20.00

0
00.00

00.00

04.00

08.00
12.00
16.00
Hour of the day

20.00

00.00

41

49

8
Energy bought from the grid

6
4

Energy sold to the grid

4
Energy [MWh]

Energy [MWh]

2
0
2

2
Pumped hydro storage
4

6
00.00

Flywheel storage

04.00

08.00
12.00
16.00
Hour of the day

20.00

00.00

17

25
33
Hour of the day

Fig. 4. Graphic of the DER energy production (upper left), served (un-)controllable loads (upper right), storage cycle (bottom left) and grid exchange (bottom
right).

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