Spatially Informed Techno-Economic and Resilience Optimization of Hydrogen–Biogas Microgrids for Energy-Burdened Rural Communities

Energy-burdened rural communities require hybrid renewable energy storage solutions that are not only economically viable but also resilient to extended generation shortfalls. This study develops a spatially informed techno-economic and resilience assessment framework for hydrogen–biogas renewable microgrids and applies it to Robeson County, North Carolina. A Hydrogen Priority Index (HPI) is used to identify locations where high household energy burden coincides with favorable renewable energy suitability. Four community-scale microgrid configurations are then evaluated in HOMER Pro under standard economic criteria and an embedded seven-day winter solar shortfall stress scenario. Results show that biogas integration reduces net present cost by 28.4% by restructuring the optimal system architecture and reducing PV and battery oversizing. PV–battery configurations cannot achieve near-complete resilience under the imposed stress scenario regardless of component scaling, while hydrogen-inclusive configurations reduce stress-period unmet load by 97.2%. The full hydrogen–biogas hybrid delivers this resilience-constrained performance at 26% lower net present cost than the hydrogen-only configuration. These findings demonstrate that combining spatial prioritization with resilience-constrained techno-economic assessment supports more equitable and deployment-ready planning of renewable microgrids for underserved rural communities.