Coordinated Fast Frequency Regulation in Dynamic Virtual Power Plants via Disturbance Estimation

TL;DR

This paper presents a decentralized control method for dynamic virtual power plants that combines disturbance estimation and distributed coordination to improve fast frequency regulation in renewable-heavy grids.

Contribution

It introduces a layered control architecture that enables fast local corrections and coordinated imbalance compensation among DVPP nodes, enhancing scalability and efficiency.

Findings

Validated on a 4-bus system with high renewable penetration

Demonstrated improved frequency regulation performance

Showed effective coordination between DVPP nodes

Abstract

In the context of dynamic virtual power plants (DVPPs), the integration of frequency containment reserve (FCR) and fast frequency control (FFC) enabled via local compensation of power imbalance represents a significant advancement in decentralized frequency regulation. However, they still have to cope with the limited power and energy capacities associated with commonly available storage solutions. This work combines a disturbance estimation based decentralized local control with distributed imbalance compensation in the event of local shortfall. The layered architecture facilitates fast local corrections in power setpoints while enabling coordination between neighbouring DVPP nodes to leverage the aggregated capacity, ensuring scalable and efficient operation suitable for renewable-heavy future grids. The proposed approach is validated on an illustrative 4-bus system with a high percentage of renewables.