Virtual Power Plant (VPP) is a cloud-based central or distributed control center that takes advantage of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and Internet of things (IoT) devices to aggregate the capacity of heterogeneous Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) including different types of dispatchable and non-dispatchable distributed generation (DG) units (e.g., CHPs, natural gas-fired reciprocating engines, small-scale wind power plants (WPPs), photovoltaics (PVs), run-of-river hydroelectricity plants, biomass, etc.), energy storage systems (ESS), and controllable or flexible loads (CL or FL) and form a coalition of heterogeneous DERs for the purpose of energy trading in the wholesale electricity markets and/or providing ancillary services for system operators on behalf of non-eligible individual DERs.
