Energy Storage-Driven Virtual Power Plants: Key Enablers, Operations, and Policy Landscapes in Future Power Systems

Dear Colleagues,

The massive uptake of renewable energy sources helps reduce carbon emissions. However, with the continuous increase in the penetration rate of new energy resources, conventional units, as the main flexibility regulation resources in power grids, are gradually being phased out, resulting in an inability to guarantee secure operations and market functionality in power systems. Flexible regulatory resources, including energy storage and virtual power plants, can play an important role in power grid operations, helping ensure secure, cost-effective, and sustainable power system operations. This Special Issue aims to attract original research for key technologies related to the participation of flexible resources, such as energy storage and virtual power plants, in the operations and regulation of power systems, as well as novel energy market policies and commercial mechanisms, to promote the full utilization of flexible regulation resources and solve theoretical and practical problems for flexible resources in power systems.

This Special Issue welcomes original research on the topics, which include but are not limited to the following areas:

• Planning, dispatch, and control for flexible resources participating in power system operations.
• Business models and trading mechanisms of flexible resources in power systems.
• Aggregation, trading, and control strategies for distributed flexible resources.
• Collaborative control of the main-distribution network to support the flexible role of distributed resources.
• Analysis and optimization of control mechanisms for frequency security and stability in power systems.
• Classification and design of load forecasting application scenarios under the influence of multiple factors.
• Coordination optimization and control of multiple resources, including conventional power sources, emerging renewable energy sources, and flexible resources.

Dr. Mingze Zhang
Prof. Dr. Yang Li
Dr. Samson Yu
Dr. Chao Long
Dr. Saman A. Gorji
Guest Editors

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