**5. Discussion**

The case study analysis presented in this article widely reflects the financial key issues that have been reported in the literature [7,73,74] but extend the existing scope of the studies reviewed by the community perspective. The study illustrates the fundamental impact of the socio-economic community characteristics on off-grid energy systems and vice versa. Although the community- and consumer perspective have been included in RE MG system reviews [7,30,75] or were the sole focus of MG implementation reviews [41], it has been of limited consideration yet, as to what extend the consumer economics influence MG operation and how MG operation can specifically contribute to enhance and stabilise the income situation of MG customers as part of a planning approach.

Secondly, while the relation between technical and financial sustainability has been evaluated in the literature [25,35,74,76], approaches how to implement RE off-grid systems that combine qualitative energy services at affordable tariffs and potential trade-offs, or how to optimise existing systems that are not ye<sup>t</sup> financially sustainable have received less attention with few exceptions [77].

These findings have specific implications for the planning- and development of MGs from the project-level perspective as well as for the scaling of MGs across SSA. Both implications will be discussed in the following subsections.
