Fundamental Contributions to Distributed Energy Resource Aggregation and Virtual Power Plant Modelling for the Emerging Nigerian Electricity Market

This research makes fundamental contributions to the theory and practical modelling of distributed energy resource aggregation and virtual power plant operation, grounded in the specific market structure and regulatory framework of the emerging Nigerian electricity market. The proliferation of rooftop solar, battery storage, electric vehicles, and flexible industrial loads across Nigeria is creating a fragmented distributed generation landscape that existing market dispatch and grid management mechanisms were not designed to accommodate. The research develops an original theoretical framework for characterising the aggregate flexibility envelope of heterogeneous distributed energy resources using a set-theoretic approach that rigorously accounts for individual device constraints, communication latency, and forecast uncertainty in a computationally tractable aggregated representation. This aggregate flexibility model is incorporated into a novel bidding strategy formulation for VPP participation in the Nigerian Electricity Market's proposed ancillary services market, drawing on non-cooperative game theory to analyse the strategic interactions between competing VPP aggregators. Original contributions include derivation of existence and uniqueness conditions for the proposed game's Nash equilibrium, development of a distributed consensus algorithm enabling VPP coordination without centralised communication, and a regulatory framework analysis identifying the amendments to the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry's Market Rules required to accommodate VPP participation. Simulation validation using a model of the Lagos distribution network with 250 distributed PV and storage nodes demonstrates that the VPP achieves 89 percent of the theoretical flexibility envelope activation while respecting all network constraints. Keywords: virtual power plant, distributed energy resources, electricity market, aggregation, Nigeria.