Abstract: [Objectives] In the process of achieving the "dual carbon goals," issues such as the failure of the coupling between power-to-gas and carbon capture systems, low energy utilization efficiency, high volatility of renewable energy, and insufficient incentives from emission reduction policies have harmed the economic interests of virtual power plants. To address these issues, an optimized dispatch model considering low carbon and economic efficiency has been established for virtual power plants based on liquid carbon capture systems and hydrogen-blending gas equipment. [Methods] This study approaches the topic from two perspectives: innovative low-carbon equipment and carbon trading policies. Firstly, mathematical models are established for the components including the liquid storage carbon capture system, the power-to-gas equipment, the gas turbine, the electric furnace, and the energy storage system. Secondly, it designs tiered carbon trading prices tailored to different carbon emissions, introducing price compensation factors and price escalation factors to incentivize virtual power plants to reduce emissions. It proposes optimization scheduling strategies with economic and low-carbon objectives as the target functions. Finally, the linearization method is used to solve the model efficiently. Case studies are conducted under various scenarios including different hydrogen blending ratios, coupling equipment configurations, and carbon trading mechanisms to validate the proposed models. [Results] Numerical results demonstrate that compared to conventional virtual power plants, operations with hydrogen blending and liquid-storage P2G-CCS coupling devices respectively reduce operating costs by 6.21% and 12.62%, while tiered carbon trading prices lead to a 12.96% decrease in virtual power plant carbon emissions.[Conclusions] The proposed scheduling model effectively achieves low-carbon emissions, enhances wind power utilization, and reduces operational costs for power plants.

Key words: virtual power plants, low-carbon scheduling, carbon capture, tiered carbon trading, hydrogen-blended gas