Scheduling Idc-Based Virtual Power Plants Considering Backup Power

The virtual power plant (VPP) can aggregate massive distributed resources to participate in power system operation. Different types of resources have been investigated to construct VPPs. Internet data centers (IDCs) are regarded as flexible power consumers that can potentially cooperate with power systems. This paper exhibits the insight for constructing VPPs based on IDCs while comprehensively considering the operational flexibility of the workloads and power supply devices. On the workloads, this paper models the temporal and spatial flexibility of workloads in detail. On the power supply devices, this paper explores their spare capacity with respect to the power supply reliability requirement. Then, a day-ahead scheduling method of the IDC-based VPPs is established based on the operational flexibility modeling. Case studies validate the proposed approach. Moreover, because of the coupling of workload dispatch and power supply device operation, the synergy effect does not equal the sum of its parts.