Abstract

One of the significant environmental issues is global warming, and governments have changed their procedures to reduce carbon emissions. Sustainability is commonly described as having three dimensions: environmental, economic, and social. There are numerous environmental impacts associated with energy systems and the significance of energy for living standards and economic development. Therefore, the movement towards intelligent energy systems and virtual power plants (VPPs) is being pursued more rapidly due to economic and environmental issues. The VPP is one of the technologies used to increase the entire system’s efficiency. Moreover, because of environmental pollution, increased greenhouse gas production, and global warming, countries’ policies have changed towards reducing the use of fossil fuels and increasing the penetration of renewable energy sources (RESs) in distribution networks. However, RESs, such as wind turbines (WT) and photovoltaic (PV) panels, exhibit uncertain behavior. This issue, coupled with their high penetration, poses challenges for network operators in terms of managing the grid. Therefore, the sustainable virtual power plant (SVPP) is a suitable solution to overcome these problems and reduce the emissions in power systems. This study examines the cost of optimal operating of the SVPP and the amount of produced pollution in four different scenarios in the presence of a demand response program (DRP), energy storage system (ESS), etc., and the results are compared. The results indicate that the simultaneous implementation of DRPs and utilization of ESS can lead to a decrease in costs and pollution associated with SVPPs by 1.10% and 29.80%, respectively. Moreover, the operator can resolve the shortage and excess power generation that occurs during some hours.

Keywords: sustainable virtual power plant; energy storage systems; renewable energy source; emissions; demand response program