Experimental Validation of a Dynamic Virtual Power Plant Concept Based on Multiple-Converter Power Hardware-In-the-Loop Test Bench

TL;DR

This paper experimentally validates a control approach for a dynamic virtual power plant composed of diverse energy resources, demonstrating its ability to provide fast frequency regulation despite practical limitations.

Contribution

It presents the first experimental validation of a DVPP control design using a multi-converter PHIL test bed with heterogeneous DERs.

Findings

DVPP successfully provides fast frequency regulation

The control approach effectively manages practical DER limitations

The system's dynamic response matches desired behavior

Abstract

Recently, the concept of dynamic virtual power plants (DVPP) has been proposed to collectively provide desired dynamic ancillary services such as fast frequency and voltage control by a heterogeneous ensemble of distributed energy resources (DER). This paper presents an experimental validation of a recent DVPP control design approach on a multi-converter power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) test bed system. More specifically, we consider a DVPP composed of a wind generation system, a photovoltaic (PV) system, and a STATCOM with small storage capacity to collectively provide grid-following fast frequency regulation in the presence of grid-frequency and load variations. The performance of the aggregated DVPP response is evaluated with respect to its ability to match a desired dynamic behavior while taking practical limitations of the individual DVPP units into account.