The idea is to build a platform for the Virtual power plants (VPPs) that would be capable of interacting with the electricity market by offering them grid balancing services resulting in earning money for the city. The concept of a virtual power plant will be implemented and all available resources like solar parks, residential PV installations, Electric vehicles (EV), EV chargers, heating systems, and battery banks will be connected to a central data center by an aggregator. The aggregator will then quantify the available flexibility and balancing services and interact with the electricity market to sell these resources for monetary benefits. The aggregator will just accumulate the surplus of energy and the loads that could be shifted to provide demand-side management by employing the real-world application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for renewable energy generation and load forecasting. These services could also be used for grid support in terms of maintaining the operating frequency and grid voltage. The propsed solution is shown in figure 1.
As a result, the electricity costs for the city would become less and the city and the participating residents will earn money on the basis of their participation. This will encourage other residents to adopt this solution and participation in this virtual power plant. This will also boost the green transition and reduce the dependence on conventional energy resources. It will also increase the energy security for the participating city and the whole country in the current geopolitical scenario.