Control Design of Dynamic Virtual Power Plants: An Adaptive Divide-and-Conquer Approach

In this paper, we present a novel control approach for dynamic virtual power plants (DVPPs). In particular, we consider a group of heterogeneous distributed energy resources (DERs) which collectively provide desired dynamic ancillary services such as fast frequency and voltage control. Our control approach relies on an adaptive divide-and-conquer strategy: first, we disaggregate the desired frequency and voltage control specifications of the aggregate DVPP via adaptive dynamic participation matrices (ADPMs) to obtain the desired local behavior for each device. Second, we design local linear parameter-varying (LPV) $\mathcal {H}_\infty$ controllers to optimally match this local behaviors. In the process, the control design also incorporates the physical and engineered limits of each DVPP device. Furthermore, our adaptive control design can properly respond to fluctuating device capacities, and thus include weather-driven DERs into the DVPP setup. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our control strategy in a case study based on the IEEE nine-bus system.