Abstract: With the increasing penetration rate of renewable energy,the problem of insufficient flexibility of power system operation is becoming increasingly prominent.Virtual power plant（VPP）is a new distributed controllable resource management model that integrates advanced communication and control technology.It aggregates multiple types of controllable resources into a whole to support the economic operation,peak shaving,frequency regulation,and stability control of the power system in multiple aspects. In this paper,from the perspective of distributed resource aggregation control and operation optimization,the current technical level and research status of VPP connotation,architecture,resource aggregation,operation optimization and other aspects were systematically reviewed.Firstly,the connotation and positioning of virtual power plant function was sorted out,and the layered aggregation control framework based on end-edge-network-cloud and the key technical issues were summarized to be solved in each link.Then,various types of physical modeling methods of resources and their aggregation models were introduced.Moreover,from the perspective of "external unification and internal coordination",the optimization control of internal resources and their optimization in VPP were summarized.Lastly,the technical challenges and development prospects of the virtual power plant in the future were summarized.