The operation of a virtual power plant today typically occurs under prototypical conditions. Timetables or control signals are transmitted between the virtual power plant control center and attached decentralized production and consumption units. With a centralized resource planning of a virtual power plant it is possible to set up products which could not be produced by individual producing or consuming units with low performance level. Only through controlled Federation of small production and consumption systems, it is possible to provide these products at an aggregate level. Energy markets are usually characterized by barriers to market entry that prevent participation of individual small production or consumption facilities. 

The idea of virtual power plant is to provide a market entry to small production and consumption facilities by overcoming the barriers to market entry to trade products which offer higher revenue than the EEG or KWKG remuneration provide. This revenue should more than cover the cost of operating a virtual power plant so that profit can be gained. In the project aims to respond to the question, whether and under which conditions an economic mode of virtual power plant is possible especially in comparison to the decentralized control. Besides the economic resource planning the product relevance of single decentralized units is checked. Knowing which power units with what relevance for economic success of the virtual power plant are responsible, represents an important decision support to integrate further power units into the virtual power plant. 

Project term is two years. First a business case is created, that allows first estimates on the economics of the virtual power plant. The second phase of the project, in which, it comes to analyze the economics of the operational establishment of the virtual power plant starts after the first economic assessment by the business case. Therefore a simulation model of the virtual power plant will be created. For an economic overall assessment of the virtual power plant the costs and the revenue are determined and included into the simulation. The rest of the project extends the simulation to further installations. The goal is to represent the current and the future expansion level of the virtual power plant before implementing a further plant to determine economic impact of the implementation.