Cloud-edge-end collaboration-based joint design of frequency control and transmission communication for virtual power plants

• An integrated design of control and communication is proposed for frequency issues. • Hybrid communication network impacts are considered in frequency control. • The designed routing strategy is used to overcome the impact of network uncertainty. • The developed dynamic control method is utilized to guarantee control performance. Virtual power plants (VPPs) have recently become a prospective paradigm to support frequency control of main grid by harnessing the aggregation and regulation potential of end-side power load resources. However, in the VPPs participation in the frequency control process, the imperfect communication environment poses significant challenges for power regulation dispatch and dynamic control. This motivates us to propose a novel joint design method for frequency control and transmission communication of VPPs. First of all, a cloud-edge-end collaboration based control architecture is established. Based on this, we develop a joint design strategy for VPPs power dispatch and wired routing optimization under cloud-edge collaboration. That is, the effect of cloud-edge communication network uncertainty on VPPs power dispatch is considered, which can be overcome by using the devised routing optimization policy. Furthermore, we propose an integrated design approach for VPPs dynamic power control and wireless network performance under edge-end collaboration. Specifically, the impact of edge-end wireless network performance on VPPs dynamic power control is considered, which is able to be eliminated utilizing the developed dynamic power control strategy for VPPs cyber-physical collaborative “collection, transmission, decision and control” generalized closed-loop. Finally, simulation results validate the feasibility and efficacy of our proposed joint design method.