• Energy Research

Data availability: The data that has been used is confidential. Demand response (DR) based on the time-of-use (TOU) electricity price is an effective method for addressing the source‒load mismatch in microgrids by improving the load curve on the user side, thereby improving source‒load matching. However, the degree to which users respond to DR strategies is not only influenced by economic factors but also closely related to psychological factors. Therefore, considering the TOU electricity prices on both the generation side and the load side, this paper presents an optimization strategy for the bidirectional TOU electricity price for multi-microgrids (MMGs) coupled with multilevel games. First, the DR model based on the endowment effect is constructed with close attention to the influence of psychological factors on user behavior in the context of electric energy trading in an MMG system. A bidirectional TOU electricity pricing incentive mechanism is designed that simultaneously targets both power producers and users, promoting the active participation of various stakeholders in scheduling within MMG systems. Second, a multilevel differential game model is established, which takes power producers, microgrid operators (MGOs), and microgrid users as the main actors, couples a noncooperative game and a leader–follower game, achieves game balance by optimizing the bidirectional TOU electricity price, and makes appropriate decisions. Finally, the case study results demonstrate that the proposed strategy can optimize energy management, reduce the system's operating cost and the user's power consumption cost, and improve the power producers' economic benefit and user satisfaction. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 62233006.