Virtual power plant architecture using OpenADR 2.0b for dynamic charging of automated guided vehicles

This paper investigates a virtual power plant (VPP) using the OpenADR 2.0b communication protocol to securely and reliably operate distributed energy resources (DERs) over public Internet infrastructure, providing ancillary services to the transmission system operator (TSO). VPP performance analysis was based on an experimental setup as well as a dynamic behavioural model and numerical simulations. The experimental setup consisted of battery stacks from automated guided vehicles at a harbour container terminal. Within this experimental study, we analysed data exchange utilising the OpenADR protocol over a four-week period between the VPP in Slovenia and the terminal management system in Germany by assessing the selected quality of service parameters - latency (round-trip time), packet loss, retransmissions, bandwidth, amount of traffic and message patterns. The impact of latency on performance of the VPP aggregating battery stacks with other DER types was investigated using numerical simulations. Load profiles for the selected DERs and communication channel models were derived from field measurements.