Techno-economic assessment of electric vehicle-based decentralized electricity delivery for enhanced power resilience during outages

The integration of electric vehicles (EVs) into power systems offers a promising pathway to enhance energy resilience during grid outages. Most of the existing studies treat EV outage support as a short-term, technical problem, with limited attention to economics, business models (e.g., ownership and stakeholders), or long-term outages. To bridge the gap, this study presents a comprehensive framework to evaluate the techno-economic feasibility of using EV mobility as a decentralized electricity delivery solution during both short-term and long-term outages. A rule-based control strategy is developed to operate EVs under realistic operational constraints, with the primary objective of maximizing energy delivery and minimizing unmet demand during outages. The framework incorporates real-world data, including household and critical load profiles, EV battery capacities, ownership types, outage durations, travel distances, and seasonal variations. Scenario-based simulations are performed to compare various technical and economical key performance indicators. Results show that EVs with personal ownership type and large capacity (100 kWh) can effectively meet residential energy needs during short-term outages. In long-term outages, expanding the EV fleet effectively reduce unmet demand, and higher solar generation in summer and spring significantly improves energy availability compared to winter, where unmet load is more than twice as high under identical conditions. The findings offer practical insights for stakeholders and policymakers in developing EV-based resilience strategies for future energy systems. Furthermore, the study highlights the importance of designing appropriate business models to support the integration of mobile energy services into resilience planning. • Techno-economic framework to assess EVs as mobile energy for short/long outage resilience. • Rule-based EV dispatch cuts unmet demand considering battery, mobility, ownership limits. • Scenario evaluation using KPIs for technical reliability and economic viability. • Business/ownership models exploration outlines market paths and operational challenges. • Policy and governance guidance for scalable and cost-effective EV-based resilience.