Exergy-driven optimal operation of virtual energy station based on coordinated cooperative and Stackelberg games

Virtual Energy Stations (VESs) can aggregate customer-side Integrated Energy Systems (IESs) to participate in electricity and natural gas markets. It helps to promote the synergies among different energies, lower IESs' energy cost, and balance the supply and demand of power systems. This paper proposes an exergy-driven optimal scheduling method of VES based on coordinated cooperative and Stackelberg games to regulate IESs via demand response (DR) effectively and economically. Firstly, the VES operation framework with equal exergy replacement is developed to unify the energy adjustment and conversion of IESs for less energy cost and lower economic loss risk. Secondly, the scheduling models of VES and IESs based on Cooperative and Stackelberg Games are proposed. VES forms a cooperative alliance with IESs to respond to external energy markets' price fluctuations for overall benefit maximization. Then the Stackelberg game theory is employed to characterize the interest-conflict behaviors of VES and IESs. It can maximize the overall interests of VES and IES, achieve more flexibility from IESs, and improve IESs' enthusiasm in DR. Thirdly, the equilibrium solution existence of the VES optimal scheduling model based on game theories is proved. A distributed solution method based on the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) algorithm is provided to avoid the privacy information leakage of VES and IESs. Simulation results show that VES takes the main risks caused by the energy market prices' fluctuations, which helps to increase the enthusiasm of IESs in DR. And the proposed incentive mechanism has superior properties compared to the sole cooperative game or Stackelberg game.