Decentralized frequency regulation service provision for virtual power plants: A best response potential game approach

The high-renewable-penetrated power system frequently requires frequency regulation services. By aggregating heterogeneous demand-side flexible resources, the virtual power plants (VPP) are able to quickly respond to the frequency regulation signal, enabling them promising frequency regulation service providers. However, due to the difference in ownership, it is unlikely that the self-interested demand-side resources are willing to follow the VPP-oriented dispatch results. To bridge this gap, this paper proposes a decentralized game-based mechanism for the frequency regulation service provision inside the VPP. Firstly, the supply function-based bidding models of aggregated demand-side resources, namely, demand-side flexible resources and renewable distributed generations, are established. Then, a non-cooperative generalized Nash game for frequency regulation service provision is formulated. The existence, uniqueness, and competitive efficiency loss of the game are analyzed by designing an equivalent best response potential game of the original game. Additionally, a decentralized look-ahead real-time market clearing mechanism for frequency regulation service provision inside the VPP is proposed based on dual decomposition algorithm. Finally, the effectiveness and computation efficiency of the proposed method are validated in the case studies. Meanwhile, it is shown that the competition efficiency loss can be effectively reduced from around 80% to 6% when increasing the demand-side resource population from 20 to 2000 as well as balancing the demand-side resource composition. •An auction-based framework for frequency regulation service provision is proposed.•The competition in regulation service provision is modeled via generalized Nash game.•The existence, uniqueness, and efficiency loss of the equilibrium are studied.•A rolling look-ahead frequency regulation service provision mechanism is designed.