The large-scale access and application of renewable energy is one of the basic features of the Electrical Internet of Things (EIoT). Its inherent uncertainty will affect the safe and stable operation of the power grid on the one hand, and on the other hand, it cannot directly participate in the electricity market. As a multi-energy aggregation model, virtual power plant (VPP) can coordinate and control distributed energy resource (DER) and participate in the electricity market in the form of an aggregation, which is of great significance for improving the safe and economic operation level of power grid and promoting clean energy consumption in the construction content of EIoT. The research on VPP has a long history both at home and abroad. In the European FENIX project, VPPs are aimed at achieving the goal of reliable grid connection and electricity market operation of DERs, and VPPs in North America are mainly based on demand response and aggregate a large number of controllable loads. In China, State Grid Jibei Electric Power Company’s VPP demonstration project takes into account the interaction of “source-grid-load-storage”, and aggregates ubiquitous adjustable resources into an Internet power plant that can interact flexibly with the power grid. On this basis, the research status of VPP in three aspects of coordination control, optimal dispatch and participation in electricity market transactions was first analyzed. The coordination control objects of VPP mainly include various DERs, energy storage system, controllable loads as well as electric vehicles. The coordination control methods are mainly divided into centralized control and decentralized control. Under centralized control, all decisions of VPP are made by the central control unit. In decentralized control, the decision of VPP is replaced by each agent system. The optimal dispatch of VPP refers to the optimization of the capacity configuration or output of multiple internal DERs or participation in power grid scheduling as a whole under the premise of meeting the output constraints of each unit and network constraints, with the goal of maximizing profits, minimizing operating costs and minimizing carbon emissions. In addition, VPPs can quickly respond to changes in market prices and load demands when participating in electricity market transactions by using their advanced communication technology, which plays an important role in promoting electricity market liberalization, increasing market flexibility, and guiding users in peak load and frequency modulation. Secondly, the key technologies of VPP in EIoT were discussed in detail, including edge-cloud computing architecture, blockchain technology and big data technology. The edge-cloud computing architecture, on the one hand, selects the load of involved in the demand response of VPP through the cloud master station, and on the other hand, perceives the user’s power consumption behaviors through edge computing, making it more accurate in VPP’s bidding strategies. The characteristics of decentralization and transparency of blockchain are similar to the geographical dispersion of VPP and the coordination control in the scheduling process. Meanwhile, the blockchain technology can also ensure the fairness and information security of VPP when participating in electricity market transactions. The big data technology, on the one hand, can be used to predict the output of each DER more accurately, and on the other hand, it can also be used to process various information inside VPP, which can improve the speed and accuracy of data exchange and processing of each unit. Finally, the research of VPP in EIoT was prospected. The model and optimal dispatching method of VPP with locational marginal price as well as the cyber-physical security of VPP and countermeasures were considered.
