Multi-criteria evaluation for residential microgrids with bidirectional charging and equitable community-level power trading

Distributed energy technologies offer promising pathways toward carbon neutrality in residential and transportation sectors. However, their successful deployment requires reconciling diverse household preferences with community-level energy coordination. This study developed a two-step energy system model to evaluate the combined effects of vehicle-to-home (V2H) technology and community-level power trading on residential microgrids, while balancing individual household- and community-level benefits. In the first step, technological configurations for individual households were optimized, incorporating the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) based on real consumer survey data. In the second step, Shapley value-based allocation ensured equitable power trading within communities. The model was applied to four comparative cases across community sizes ranging from 5 to 500 households in the Kanto region of Japan for 2030. Results demonstrated substantial synergistic benefits from combining V2H with community power trading. Compared to the baseline without V2H and community power trading, the integrated approach achieved energy cost reductions of 66.7–86.0%, CO 2 emission reductions of 70.1–84.5%, self-sufficiency rates of 80.1–90.3%, and perfect self-consumption rates of 100%, significantly exceeding their individual effects. Community-level power trading approximately doubled vehicle battery utilization rates by enabling temporal shifting of surplus photovoltaic generation to meet evening demand. Medium-sized communities of 50–100 households captured most benefits, while larger communities achieved additional gains through increased aggregate storage capacity. These findings offer practical insights for designing sustainable residential microgrids that optimize both individual household and community outcomes.