Towards collaborative virtual power plants

To promote flexible integration of distributed energy resources into the smart grid, the notion of Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) was proposed. VPPs are formed by the integration of heterogeneous systems, organizations and entities which collaborate to ensure optimal generation, distribution, storage, and sale of energy in the energy market. The collaborative nature of VPPs gives the semblance of collaborative business ecosystem, constituted of a mix of highly interdependent relationship among stakeholders. The systematic literature review methodology is used to summarize research evidence of emerging convergence between the Collaborative Networks (CN) and VPP domains. It is observed that, various strategic and dynamic collaborative alliances are formed within a VPP which are similar to various CN organizational forms like: Virtual Breeding Environments (VBE), grasping opportunity driven-networks etc. CN principles like: virtual organization creation, operation and dissolution, negotiation, broker services, etc., are also found. Emerging collaborative forms like hybrid collaborations between known traditional CN forms were also visible.