Overview: The Trio of Energy Use represents an accessible summary of the core principles of energy consumption, and it is a tool to facilitate identifying the scale of energy users and potential energy saving opportunities.

Reasoning: This tool was born out of a conversation after a Treasure Hunt at a facility where only a handful of employees were fluent in English. We realized the value of having a short-hand method to convey where to look for the most impactful energy saving opportunities. As we developed the tool, we came to appreciate it more generally as a communication tool to help break down energy consumption into its core components.

We’ve debated extensively about two aspects of this tool in particular:

1) Is it a “Trio” or is it a “Quartet”? There is an argument for a fourth factor—the equipment’s efficiency. We settled on Trio as these are the three pieces of information that we gather from a participant to inform rough savings calculations. You are welcome to disagree 😊

2) Is “Rated Power” the best summary term? Would “size” be meaningful enough? Just saying “Rated Power”, “hp” or “kW” doesn’t translate directly to gas saving projects. So, should we use Rated Power/Input to explicitly include gas? But that’s cumbersome. We went with Rated Power, in part based on the argument that it can apply to gas to as Power is just energy use over a period of time.

Note: We recognize the symbol of the motor with the lightning bolt is not visually inclusive of gas users. Our attempts to feature both felt too busy. Maybe you have a creative alternative?

Guidance/Application: Program implementers can introduce The Trio of Energy Use in early training sessions to help build foundational knowledge on thinking about drivers of energy use and where to focus on most impactful savings opportunities. We feature the Trio tool in our Workshop 2 as part of establishing a foundational understanding of the primary factors involved in energy use by equipment, and in our Workshop 3 when discussing the primary inputs needed for bottom-up calculations. We also feature it as part of our Treasure Hunt training. In this context it’s a valuable lens to highlight where to invest the most time and attention. We have also found it useful as a guide to help participants understand the basic information needed to inform rough savings calculations to help with project prioritization.