On January 17th, the comprehensive performance evaluation meeting for China's first National Key R&D Program project on virtual power plants, "Key Technologies for Aggregation, Interaction, Regulation, and Control of Large-Scale Flexible Resource Virtual Power Plants," was held at the Zhejiang Provincial New Power Load Management Center. The Industrial Development Promotion Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology organized this performance evaluation meeting. More than 60 attendees were present, including representatives from the Department of Energy Conservation and Technology Equipment of the National Energy Administration, the project evaluation expert panel, and members of the project team.

During the meeting, the project evaluation expert panel conducted an on-site inspection of the demonstration project's construction scale, software system configuration, and hardware device deployment through a combination of online and offline methods. They also observed the joint commissioning verification involving the grid dispatch platform, the virtual power plant aggregator operation platform, and the rapid response of flexible resources. In the afternoon, the panel heard the project completion report delivered by the Project Leader, Professor Kang Chongqing, and reviewed the relevant project documents. The panel unanimously agreed that the project had fulfilled all the content and assessment indicators specified in the task contract, achieved breakthroughs in key scientific and technological issues, produced groundbreaking results in the field of virtual power plants, and demonstrated significant progress in demonstration and promotion. The panel fully affirmed the work and achievements of the project team.

In 2021, the Ministry of Science and Technology initiated the Virtual Power Plant Common Key Technology Project under the "Energy Storage and Smart Grid" special program. An industry-university-research joint technical R&D team was formed, comprising the China Electric Power Research Institute, Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tianjin University, State Grid Shanghai Energy Interconnection Research Institute, State Grid Zhejiang Electric Power Co., Ltd., State Grid Shanghai Electric Power Company, State Grid Digital Technology Holdings Co., Ltd., and State Grid Jibei Electric Power Co., Ltd. Over four years, the project team successfully addressed the scientific question concerning the "operational characteristics, interaction mechanisms, and dynamic aggregation of massive distributed resources." They overcame four key common technologies related to virtual power plants: dynamic aggregation, secure communication, trusted transactions, and coordinated regulation. The team proposed a comprehensive analytical theory for the dynamic construction, heterogeneous aggregation, and confidence quantification of virtual power plants. They developed a series of communication control modules and edge aggregation management devices for virtual power plants, and created a cloud-edge collaborative interaction, regulation, and operation system. This successfully validated the precise interaction capabilities of virtual power plants in business scenarios such as peak shaving, frequency regulation, and spot trading.

Simultaneously, the project team successfully constructed and put into operation two major demonstration projects: the Zhejiang Provincial Virtual Power Plant and the Shanghai Megacity Virtual Power Plant. Both achieved engineering validation of gigawatt-level regulation capabilities (Zhejiang reduced peak load by up to 1323 MW; Shanghai reduced peak load by up to 1162 MW). These demonstration projects have pioneered paradigms for multi-level grid interaction (stereoscopic, multi-variety) in provincial virtual power plants and for collaborative regulation (flat, multi-temporal/spatial) in megacity virtual power plants, achieving remarkable and far-reaching results.

After the meeting, Professor Kang Chongqing thanked the evaluation experts and project team members for their hard work, marking a successful conclusion to the project's implementation. He also emphasized that the project acceptance is not the end of the mission for the "national team" in virtual power plants. The project team will continue to promote the deepening of virtual power plant technology systems and engineering innovation practices in new forms, persistently leading the international impact of China's virtual power plants.

On-site Inspection Situation

Performance Evaluation Meeting

Group Photo of Project Evaluation Experts and Project Team Members