Dynamic Virtual Power Plants: Resource Coordination for Measured Inertia and Fast Frequency Services

Abstract

This paper reviews recent work on dynamic virtual power plants (DVPPs) using an Energy–Information–Market framework. It addresses the important problem of how DVPPs can support low-inertia power system operation and feeder-level stability under high renewable penetration. First, system-level studies on low-inertia operation and frequency control are used to frame quantitative requirements on rate of change of frequency, nadir, and quasi-steady-state limits. Second, energy-layer models are surveyed, including participation-factor-based DVPP controllers, grid-forming architectures, model-free frequency regulation, and robust frequency-constrained scheduling for allocating virtual inertia and fast frequency response (FFR) across distributed energy resource fleets. Third, information-layer and market-layer models are reviewed, covering stochastic and robust bidding, distribution locational marginal price-based clearing, peer-to-peer and community markets, privacy-preserving coordination, and emerging governance and cybersecurity schemes for DVPP participation. Across these strands, much of the literature remains centred on steady-state active and reactive power dispatch, with dynamic security enforced as constraints rather than formulated as verifiable and tradable services. This review identifies gaps in dynamic metrics and benchmarks, forecasting of available inertia and FFR capacity, market-physics co-design, multi-aggregator interaction, and experimentally validated DVPP implementations. These findings suggest that DVPPs can “sell stability” at the feeder level only through co-designed control, information, and market mechanisms and outline a research roadmap for this purpose.