Design of an Internet of Things based control system for provision of firm capacity during demand response

Abstract

Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) aggregate end user distributed energy resources (DERs), such as solar panels, bidirectional electric vehicles, and battery energy storage systems, to provide firm capacity during periods of peak demand. Although VPP monitoring and control frameworks have been widely studied, limited attention has been given to the communication infrastructure needed for low-latency monitoring and control of aggregated DER portfolios. In addition, most grid service participation models focus on long-term contracted participation, excluding many DERs whose owners may be unwilling to make such commitments. This thesis addresses these gaps through the development of an IoT based communication and control framework for VPPs. The framework includes a custom in-broker MQTT aggregation mechanism for real-time DER monitoring, achieving up to 93% lower latency and 100% message delivery success compared to downstream aggregation. It also incorporates a two-stage MILP control algorithm for the procurement and real-time dispatch of non-contracted DER capacity, and is validated through a real world demonstration, confirming the end-to-end feasibility of the proposed framework.