The primary focus in the era of aiming for a clean and green ecosystem is to limit the emissions released when the energy generation takes place through conventional method. One way to achieve this target is to develop a feasible alternative to fossil or gas-based conventional power plants by combining several distributed resources (DRs) or distributed energy resources (DERs) to form a network of virtual power plant (VPP). This paper explores the potential and avenues of a VPP, one of the latest technological advancements the energy industry has witnessed in the last few years. A VPP identifies the small-scale DERs and combines them, aggregated afterwards to have an energy hub that can cater to the need of power requirement. They expand the economic profits for the members, including micro DER owners, prosumers and system operators and also reduce emissions as the majority of sources compiled in the VPP network are renewables. To extract the maximum potential of VPP, optimal scheduling of the resources is essential to leverage the developed network’s efficacy. This can be achieved by employing highly advanced metaheuristic techniques to manage these flexible resources given their intermittencies and uncertain nature. The selected algorithm must be capable of handling a complex problem by reducing the computational burden and achieving the best optimum solution in line with the target objective function. The multiple benefits obtained from employing the VPP to perform effective energy management are highlighted in this work by involving various scheduling strategies and a possible direction of leveraging the potential of small-scale DERs that can contribute to grid-related services.