Electrification of Australian remote communities through degradation-aware techno-economic and environmental optimization of sustainable vehicle-to-home enabled hybrid renewable energy systems

The integration of hybrid renewable energy systems (HRES) with vehicle-to-home (V2H) capabilities presents a promising pathway to achieve sustainable electrification in remote communities. This work presents an innovative energy management system (EMS) in which a multi-objective optimization problem is formulated to simultaneously minimize net present cost (NPC), lifecycle CO2 emissions, and loss of power supply probability (LPSP). Three configuration-specific objective functions are proposed where these configurations include (i) off-grid photovoltaic (PV)–wind turbine (WT)–battery energy storage system (BESS)–diesel generator (DG), (ii) on-grid PV–WT–BESS–Grid, and (iii) off-grid PV–WT–BESS–DG with V2H. The EMS integrates mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) for degradation-aware deterministic dispatch, sequential quadratic programming algorithm (SQPA) for efficient nonlinear optimization, and non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II) for Pareto front exploration. The proposed framework is validated through an annual simulation driven by high-fidelity solar, wind, demand, and mobility profiles characteristic of remote Australian regions. Results demonstrate that the V2H-enabled off-grid configuration achieves the most favorable techno-economic and environmental performance, with a return on investment of 46.35%, a payback period of 13.67 years, and a 92.13% reduction in lifecycle CO2 emissions compared to an existing diesel-only baseline. On-grid configurations serve as comparative benchmarks, clarifying the relative benefits of V2H for islanded communities. Sensitivity analyses on renewable variability, battery costs, and project lifetime confirm the robustness and generalizability of the EMS under diverse conditions. Key findings highlight that integrating V2H with HRES can enable 100% renewable penetration and eliminate diesel dependency, while providing a scalable and computationally efficient pathway toward clean, reliable, and inclusive energy access in remote communities. Beyond technical performance, the proposed framework also contributes to socio-economic development by supporting local employment generation, enhancing energy equity, and improving community-level resilience and human development outcomes.