## 4 Results and Discussion
### Optimization Results  
The MES model provides the optimal energy system configuration for each of the selected scenarios. The results in terms of LCOE, Total Primary Energy Supply (TPES), import dependency and renewables penetration are summarized in Table 2.  
Figure 4: Total electric load profile in an average day in different seasons. Figure 5: Thermal load profiles for the four user classes: (**top right**) domestic; (**top left**) commercial activities; (**bottom left**) public offices; and (**bottom right**) school. All the proposed scenarios result in an improvement of the energy situation of the village as compared to the baseline situation. The conventional micro-grid configuration, in which thermal needs are still constrained to be satisfied by LPG boilers alone, already allows the user to achieve a consistent reduction of TPES and a significative reduction in the LCOE. However, renewables penetration and energy independency are significantly lower than for the integrated multi-energy system case and are achieved at the expense of a higher LCOE. This highlights how focusing solely on electric needs does not allow for the identification of the overall optimal solution. Similarly, the multi-good micro-grid scenario, in which all energy needs (including DHW, through electric heaters) are satisfied by an electric micro-grid, is associated with a lower LCOE value than the conventional microgrid solution, but still far from the results that can be achieved with a fully integrated system. In fact, although the system is in this case characterized by a very high penetration of solar PV panels, the micro-grid size increases significantly as a consequence of the need to manage two different loads with a single and costly storage option: as shown in Table 3, the installed PV capacity is more than four times that of the conventional micro-grid configuration, also the battery bank is almost four-fold and the diesel genset capacity is almost the same size as the baseline case, while it was almost left unused in the conventional microgrid. As expected, this configuration is suboptimal due to the restriction that is derived from the exclusion of the possibility of installing LPG boilers or thermal storage. It also results in far the highest investment cost among the four system configurations considered, confirming its low feasibility in rural contexts. This result underlines how the idea of satisfying all types of energy demand through electric appliances implies significant complications in terms of system management and dispatch strategy, leading to an unprofitable overreliance on electric storage options and an unrealistic size of installed renewable power. This can be seen in the graphical representation of the electrical dispatch in \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline  & **Traditional Energy System (Baseline)** & **Conventional Micro-Grid** & **Multi-Good Micro-Grid** & **Integrated Multi-Energy System** \\ \hline TPES [kote] & 467.8 & 322.2 & 362.3 & 442.9 \\ \hline Imports [\%TPES] & 100\% & 77.0\% & 16.2\% & 6.3\% \\ \hline Renewables [\%TPES] & 0\% & 23.0\% & 83.8\% & 93.7\% \\ \hline BESS Use [\%TFC\_el] & 0\% & 67.8\% & 61.0\% & 53.8\% \\ \hline LCOE [USD/kWh] & 0.259 & 0.220 & 0.198 & 0.090 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Summary of selected indicators for the four proposed scenarios.