Architecture and simulation of a virtual power plant in Hamburg

Inhalt:
The project Smart Power Hamburg researched opportunities to combine CHP with existing heat storage facilities within the built city environment. In order to control an undefined amount of generation assets and flexible consumers control strategies were developed. These strategies allow the economically optimized operation of the individual plants in the technical framework. For testing and developing purposes of these algorithms a simulation platform was build. This paper presents the architecture of this simulation platform and the implemented algorithms. In detail the conjunction of load forecasting, scheduling and control algorithm of the virtual power plant and the implementation of the simulation is shown. Moreover, it is shown which components are necessary for the planning and control engineering level for the adherence to the schedule of the power plant. Unlike other systems this control bases on heuristic algorithms instead of linear optimization.