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This research addresses the optimization of scheduling strategies for virtual power plants (VPPs), as demonstrated in Portugal’s national New Generation Storage (NGS) initiative, aiming to maximize societal benefits and boost the effectiveness of energy transactions in today’s advanced power networks. VPPs play a crucial role in sustainable urban energy ecosystems by combining various distributed energy resources (DERs), such as renewable generation units and battery storage installations. The underlying optimization challenge is expressed as a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model and tackled via a parallelized simulated annealing (SA) heuristic running on high-performance computing (HPC) platforms. The parallel design greatly enhances the speed of searching the solution landscape, thereby allowing the framework to cope with the growing intricacy associated with expanded DER fleets and increasingly complex dispatch requirements. The developed technique aligns closely with smart city aspirations by enabling flexible, high-efficiency energy management, supporting real-time pricing schemes, and extending the durability of essential components, such as energy storage units. Comprehensive simulation experiments reveal the method’s strong performance in reducing computation time, maintaining high-quality solutions, and scaling effectively to larger problem sizes, thereby supporting instantaneous operational decisions in competitive energy markets. In addition, the improved synchronization among DERs strengthens overall grid reliability, increases market agility, and fosters the emergence of robust, decarbonized urban energy landscapes. This investigation emphasizes the decisive impact of powerful computing resources in overcoming the complexities of contemporary energy infrastructures, illustrating the potential of cutting-edge algorithmic approaches and HPC systems to deliver scalable, responsive, and environmentally sound energy management solutions tailored to smart urban settings. Ultimately, the outcomes pave the way for energy systems that are both socially inclusive and ecologically sustainable, fully consistent with the essential aims of urban resilience and long-term sustainable progress.