A Literature Review to Analyze the State of the Art of Virtual Power Plants in Context of Information Security

Compared to conventional power plants, Virtual Power Plant is a new electrotechnical and information technology concept that is used for the interdisciplinary merging of electrical engineering and information technology for the central control and monitoring of decentralized renewable energy systems and components. A formal presentation of definitions and consensus building is seen as an instrument to specify the practice-oriented design of Virtual Power Plants. The present paper focuses on the Virtual Power Plants as key factor for sustainable energy—especially in its common understanding of terms. This compilation serves as a mutual knowledge base and function because of the “Shared Conceptualization” for the specialist user within the knowledge domain “Information technology” and “Electrical engineering.” An Event-driven Process Chain is created for this purpose. In order to obtain such an Event-driven Process Chain, a qualitative analysis based on semi—systematic literature review led to a selection of suitable term definitions that are contained in the scientific databases. This investigation finally leads to the compilation of entities and their mutual relations, which are required to create the model. The conception of an Event-driven Process Chain is seen in this context as a contribution to the specification and structuring of the discussion about Virtual Power Plants. A potential contribution is, the ability to map a field of research, synthesize the state of knowledge, and create an agenda for further research in context of information systems and information security research.