As a result of the geographic insularity, the energy systems in the Islands are characterized by high investment, installation, and exploitation costs, low profitability, limited connection to the energy market, over-dependence on fossil fuels, high greenhouse gas emissions level, and poor electrical grid quality. Those barriers limit the improvement of the local energy infrastructure and slow down the economic development of the Islands. Although, Islands have a high potential for effective integration of distributed RES thanks to the availability of marine energy sources from the surrounding sea (ocean) and the abundance of wind and/or solar irradiation sources. The adoption of these local renewable energy sources can enhance the household energy efficiency and ensure Islands' energy independence while providing cost-effective solutions. However, the high penetration of renewable energy may cause heavy fluctuations in the whole load system, damage the quality of the electricity network and impact considerably the electric grid structure by moving from conventional generation to variable distributed energy production. This change leads to a new grid architecture characterized by a growing variability and uncertainty triggered by the high shares of variable renewable energy. Thus, decarbonization, frequency stability, profitability, and demand-response became very challenging tasks. Therefore, the key challenge lies in developing new concepts to ensure the successful integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) in existing and future market structures. To address these issues, Virtual Power Plants (VPP) are considered an efficient solution to provide operational flexibility to the local electrical grid1. Based on aggregation and optimal control of DERs, a VPP increases the profitability of its installations by guaranteeing the continuity of services and enhancing the quality of the local power grid. In this context, VPP4Islands is a revolutionary concept developed for the specific needs of islands to enhance the use of the available RES and reduce fossil fuel consumption while ensuring electric grid stability and complying with Smart Grid standards.
The vision of VPP4Islands is to develop a new concept for energy production, distribution, and monitoring dedicated to islands. The new concept will promote RES use and revolutionize the existing small grids and Energy Communities (ECs) in the Islands. The proposed flexible VPP will not be considered as a conventional power plant constituted of small distributed energy sources but as a flexible green power plant that can store surplus energy and modify its behavior and architecture to support unpredictable growth and change in energy demand, climate and market, delivering stability to the grid. VPP4Islands will enhance the innovation capacity and competitiveness of the VPP in Europe based on demand-centered approaches to address the uncertainties and the weakness of the existing VPP. This will be achieved by the appropriate promotion of open innovation and by making smart technologies an asset for an intelligent business.
