Impact of Communication Delay in a Coordinated Control VPP Model with Demand Side Flexibility: A Case Study

Conventional power systems are based on the production of electrical energy, majorly from fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), with the overall efficiency of the energy conversion process as low (typically 30–40%). Due to energy security and climate changes, there has been a shift toward non-conventional energy sources, which has given rise to new technologies and concepts like virtual power plants (VPP), distributed generation (DG), smart grids, and many more. The fast-paced integration of distributed energy resources (DER) requires new research and innovation to overcome newly emerging issues in this regard. The idea of a virtual power plant (VPP) has evolved in recent literature to incorporate DGs and widen their distribution in electricity grids. It combines various small, medium, and large DG units with existing conventional power plants into a ‘virtually single’ generating facility. This work focuses on modeling a VPP with solar PV energy generation, a parabolic trough solar thermal system, an electric vehicle, and a conventional thermal power plant; and designing an appropriate control strategy for the same. Modern optimization tools like grasshopper optimization algorithms (GOAs), salp swarm optimization (SSO), and sine cosine algorithms (SCAs) have been investigated for the sake of obtaining the optimum coordinated control of VPP.