ABB Ability™ OPTIMAX® for Virtual Power Plants (OPX-VPPs) aggregates and integrates decentralized energy generation, flexible loads and storages systems to enable the cost-effective participation in energy markets. With a flexible and scalable system architecture you can customize and use to implement your business model & trade intelligently on the energy market. Aggregate, control, monitor and optimize the decentralized production of energy from distributed energy resources (DERs), such as wind, solar, combined heat and power (CHPs), biogas plants, hydro power, fossil steam, power-to-heat, diesel engines and other types of power sources on and off the grid to meet local or regional needs. Energy storage facilities, such as batteries, thermal storage, compressed air, and pumped storage, can also be incorporated into a VPP.

The system’s architecture is flexible and customizable and has following capabilities:

• Trade and portfolio management to help operators understand current energy assets and manage trades of surplus energy
  


• Monitoring several parameters, including self-consumption using the application server that collects data across the entire real-time pool of distributed energy resources and feeds it into the Optimization Engine for analysis and reporting purposes generating information for operators to use for the following capabilities:
  
  - Forecast and Trading through Load and Renewable Forecast, Flexibility Indication, Trading Decision Support and Interface
  
  - Day-Ahead & Intra-Day Planning through The Day Ahead Schedule Generation capability, Intra-Day Schedule Generation, and Power production surplus/shortage (Flexibility Indication)
  
  - Real-time Optimization which helps optimize real-time energy resources through Power Pool Balancing, Automatic Asset Dispatch, and Ancillary Service and Demand Response Calls.
  
• Monitoring and control mechanisms (SCADA/DCS) track and alert the operator when problems occur with these capabilities:
  - Alarms & Events
  
  - Data Historian
  
  - Plant Schedule
  


• Minimize operations during peak load times and reduce grid purchases with the use of the Aggregation/Disaggregation/Forecast Importer.

OPTIMAX Forecasting and Planning Modules include: Load Forecasting Module for non-controllable loads, Renewable Generation Module, Trading Module for Bid Generation, Decision Support and Links to Trading.