Stackelberg Game-Based Pricing Mechanism for a PV-Storage Virtual Power Plant Considering Green Electricity Traceability

To address the issue that various participants in a virtual power plant operate independently and traditional pricing doesn"t fully reflect the environmental value of green electricity, this paper proposes a leader-follower pricing mechanism for virtual power plants with photovoltaic storage that accounts for green electricity tracking. First, we design a green electricity tracking and environmental quantification system, embedding the environmental premium into the flexible load utility function. Then, we establish a leader-follower game model where the virtual power plant aggregator with photovoltaic storage acts as the leader and the flexible loads are the followers. For the continuous convex optimization problem of flexible loads, by combining the KKT conditions and the big-M method, the model is converted into a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem that is easier to solve. The results show that this mechanism incentivizes demand response through green electricity premiums, encouraging users to shift their loads to times of high photovoltaic generation, and significantly improves the local absorption capacity of green electricity while achieving a win-win outcome for all parties.