A Distribution Network Planning Method Considering the Distributed Energy Resource Flexibility of Virtual Power Plants
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1-What are the novelty and advantages of your method? Please clarify What exactly is the purpose of this work? Was it not possible to achieve the goals with simpler controllers? .
2- In the introduction, it is not enough to state the current work. It should be expanded and reconstructed. Including the motivation, the main work, and the improvements compared with previous related works should be emphasized in this section and explain how the present work defers from that published previously, also, the literature review given in this paper is pore to state the contribution of the present work, as there are recent works that deal with the HEMS optimization which need to be added such as:
[1] Soliman, Mohamed S., et al. "Supervisory energy management of a hybrid battery/PV/tidal/wind sources integrated in DC-microgrid energy storage system." Energy Reports 7 (2021): 7728-7740.
[2] Sahri, Younes, et al. "Energy management system for hybrid PV/wind/battery/fuel cell in microgrid-based hydrogen and economical hybrid battery/super capacitor energy storage." Energies 14.18 (2021): 5722. Etc…
3- The motivation of the research is not clear and the innovation of the paper is insufficient, if it is not then these should be respectively given.
4- The abstract and introduction is too short and a reader can't get full information of contribution. It must be revised. In particular, the last paragraph of the introduction should be seriously edited.
5-The recommended method should be presented in comparison with many other publications in the literature.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper needs moderate to extensive editing and proof-reading.
It also needs a specialized reviewer to prove all mathematics and physics involved. I cannot do it, as I am from an related field.
The vast majority of references are from Chinese authors. While I do respect Chinese scholarship's innovative contribution to such emerging fields of research, I strongly believe more Western authors must be taken into account.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This manuscript proposes a method for power distribution network planning with consideration of flexible distributed energy resources such as electric vehicles. The power distribution planning cost is minimized by considering the impacts of both the photovoltaic and distributed energy storage resources. While this topic and the methods are of interest to the readership of Sustainability, major revisions are required before this manuscript can be considered for publication.
Comments
1. A notation table is required to make the models easier to comprehend. It is suggested that the decision variables and parameters should be separated in the table.
2. The literature review can benefit from significant expansion. There is little synthesis in the literature review. The connection between the reviewed papers as well as the possible limitations of each of them are not provided. It is also unclear what ‘the internal flexibility resources of virtual power plants’ are in Line 86. The academic contributions of the manuscript seem quite limited. The innovation (2) of this manuscript upon existing studies is somewhat weak and the justification for innovation (1) seems to be missing. It is thus suggested the manuscript provide more explanation on how the proposed model is different from existing studies.
3. Please provide the details on how the improved k-means and k-means are used in the related statements, including ‘the improved k-means algorithm is used to obtain 96 hours of PV output data in a typical year’ and ‘finally, the typical load data of 96 hours is obtained by k-means algorithm based on historical data.’ And why are k-means and improved k-means algorithms chosen for the tasks?
4. Please provide the meaning or the objective of equations after each equation or each group of equations are given, primarily in Section 3. This way, the readers can understand the models more quickly.
5. How problem (6) is solved given that Equations. 12 and 13 are nonlinear? Was any linearization technique used?
6. Titles of Table 3 and Table 4 should be revised.
7. The quality of English in the manuscript requires significant improvement. Many sentences are confusing. As such, professional English editing services are recommended. Below I list a few issues.
a. Line 41, what does ‘them’ refer to? Lines 45-47, this sentence needs to be revised. It is unclear what ‘it’ refers to.
b. Line 45, the full name of ‘PV’ is not provided beforehand. Similarly, ‘MILP’ in Line 95. Line 155, the full name of ‘TOU’ is not given beforehand as well.
c. Line 51, an ‘in’ is missing before ‘Ref. [4]’.
d. Many words seem redundant, such as ‘achieve the optimization goal of minimizing’ or ‘a distribution network planning scheme with optimal line planning is obtained’.
e. Lines 142-143 have grammatical errors and are confusing.
f. There is typically no indent before ‘Where’ after equations.
g. Line 246.
h. Does ‘quantifying the flexibility resources in virtual power plant’ mean ‘quantifying the benefits of flexibility resources in virtual power plant’ throughout the manuscript?
8. In references, some titles should be uncapitalized, such as 15, 16, and 22.
Please see the related comments provided above.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is well revised, it can be accepted.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for addressing the comments.
The quality of English can be improved, despite that the minor issues I pointed out has been addressed.
