Recently, the achievements of the national key R&D project led by Professor Kang Chongqing from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Applied Electronics (EEA) at Tsinghua University were featured in a special report by the Science and Education Channel’s program “Fantasy World” on CCTV. The program covered the development background, technical challenges, scientific progress, and demonstration results of virtual power plants in the context of the new energy system, interviewing key project team members including Professor Kang Chongqing, Professor Chen Qixin, and Assistant Researcher Gao Hongchao.

Virtual power plants, as a crucial component of the new power system, aggregate flexible resources on the distribution network side to form virtual units that can emulate the characteristics of traditional power plants. These virtual units can provide fast regulation services such as frequency modulation and ramping, ensuring the stable operation of the power system. Additionally, they offer “generation” capacity through demand response and spot market participation, becoming a “new type of power source” in the power system.

Project Overview:

The project “Key Technologies for the Aggregation and Interactive Control of Large-Scale Flexible Resources in Virtual Power Plants” was approved in 2021. It aligns with the national strategic demand for “Energy Storage and Smart Grid Technology” and addresses the “dual carbon” goals and the construction of a new power system with renewable energy as the mainstay. The project aims to effectively aggregate and dispatch large-scale flexible resources to solve the insufficient flexibility regulation capacity of the power system. By tackling various technical challenges in the interactive control of large-scale flexible resources, the project has exploited the potential of extensive distributed flexible resources. Currently, the project has completed key technological breakthroughs for large-scale flexible resource virtual power plants, resulting in a series of core scientific and technological achievements. Some engineering validations have been conducted in major demonstration bases in Zhejiang and Shanghai.

Team Introduction:

For many years, EEA has focused on core scientific issues in the field of electrical engineering, dedicating efforts to technological breakthroughs and innovation in the power and energy sector. As a crucial think tank supporting the national energy and power sector, EEA has been deeply involved in formulating major national energy strategies, providing policy consultations, and revising documents. The department has undertaken significant projects in power system reform, energy development planning, new power system construction, and the cultivation of energy internet business models, actively offering insights and suggestions. The Smart Energy Research Group within the department has conducted extensive research and practical work in the field of virtual power plants, contributing to multiple international and domestic technical standards. Their research achievements supported the virtual power plant demonstration project for the “100% Green Power Supply” at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. They also designed trading schemes for virtual power plants to participate in the power market in provinces such as Guangdong, Shanxi, and North China, all of which were among the first in China. Additionally, the team developed a cyber-physical integrated virtual power plant operation simulation system and edge devices for multi-dimensional decision-making for massive and diverse users. These innovations provided essential technical support for virtual power plant demonstration projects in regions such as Guangdong, Zhejiang, North Hebei, Shanxi, Jiangxi, and Hubei.