VIRTUS Project: A Scalable Aggregation Platform for the Intelligent Virtual Management of Distributed Energy Resources

The VIRTUS project aims to create a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) prototype coordinating the Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) of the power system and providing services to the system operators and the various players of the electricity markets, with a particular focus on the industrial sector agents. The VPP will be able to manage a significant number of DERs and simulate realistic plants, components, and market data to study different operating conditions and the future impact of the policy changes of the Balancing Markets (BM). This paper describes the project’s aim, the general structure of the proposed framework, and its optimization and simulation modules. Then, we assess the scalability of the optimization module, designed to provide the maximum possible flexibility to the system operators, exploiting the simulation module of the VPP.