Optimal scheduling of virtual power plant for short term operating reserve considering EV battery swapping

Virtual power plants aggregate flexible resources for market participations. This plays an important role for the secure operations of power networks with high renewable penetrations. The paper proposes a two-stage robust optimization model for the VPP considering the battery swapping service for electric vehicles. The swapping service is conducted in a distributed manner through a central battery charging station and multiple battery distribution stations, which are connected through the transportation truck. The VPP is operated to participate in the energy and reserve markets. The technical requirements of reserve calling are modeled considering the secondary response capability for the short term operating reserve (STOR) as defined by the Britain grid. The nested column and constraint generation (NCCG) algorithm is used to solve the model considering the binary variables in the second stage. Simulation with two study cases demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. It indicates that the VPP provides reserve capacity fulfilling arbitrary reserve usage, and the VPP rewards is decreased with the increased level of uncertainties.