Controlling a group of microCHPs: planning and realization

This paper discusses the planning problem of a group of domestic Combined Heat and Power (microCHP) appliances, which together form a Virtual Power Plant (VPP). To act on an electricity trading market, this VPP has to specify a production plan for electricity for given times of the day to offer to this market. These amounts have to be delivered exactly when these times arrive; moreover, deviations from these contracts are penalized for. We focus on the planning of individual microCHPs for one day ahead, given that the aggregated output of the group should fulfill a desired production pattern that the VPP wants to offer on the market. The contribution in this context is twofold. Firstly, we present a planning approach based on column generation which calculates for all individual appliances production patterns. The production patterns are calculated such that the deviation of the agregated pattern of all appliances from a prespecified pattern is minimized. Secondly, we investigate how a desired pattern for the group can be specified based on global parameters and which patterns can be realized afterwards by the developed planning approach. In this way we get insight what kind of pattern may be offered on the market. The presented results show that we can find near optimal solutions using a column generation technique and that we can offer patterns with large variation on the market, as long as the running average does not deviate too much from the possible production.