Aggregation Model and Market Mechanism for Virtual Power Plant Participation in Inertia and Primary Frequency Response

The declining provision of inertia by synchronous generators in modern power systems necessitates aggregating distributed energy resources (DERs) into virtual power plants (VPPs) to unlock their potential in delivering inertia and primary frequency response (IPFR) through ancillary service markets. To facilitate DER participation in the IPFR market, this paper proposes an aggregation model and market mechanism for VPPs participating in IPFR. First, an energy-reserve-IPFR market framework is developed, in which a VPP acts as an intermediary to coordinate heterogeneous DERs. Second, by taking into account the delay associated with inertial response, an optimization-based VPP aggregation method is introduced to encapsulate the IPFR process involving a variety of DERs. Third, an energy-reserve-IPFR market mechanism with VPP participation is introduced, aiming to minimize social costs, where stochastic deviations of renewable energy generation are explicitly modeled through chance-constrained reformulations, ensuring that the cleared energy, reserve, and IPFR schedules remain secure against forecast errors. Case studies on IEEE 30-bus and IEEE 118-bus systems show that the nadir and quasi-steady-state frequencies are reproduced by the VPP aggregation model with a mean absolute percentage error ≤ 0.03%, and the proposed market mechanism with VPP participation reduces the total system cost by approximately 40% and increases the net profit by about 30%.