Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS)
End use models FAQs
February 1, 2013
What is an end-use model?
An end-use model is a set of equations designed to disaggregate a RECS sample household’s
total annual fuel consumption into end uses such as space heating, air conditioning, water
heating, refrigeration, and so on. These disaggregated values are then weighted up to produce population estimates of total and average energy end uses at various levels of geography, by housing unit type, or other tabulations of interest.
Why are end-use models needed?
Information regarding how total energy is distributed across various end uses is critical to
meeting future energy demand and improving efficiency and building design. Using submeters
to measure exact end-use consumption within each sample household is the ideal way to obtain
this information. However, it is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to implement.
Instead, EIA uses a statistical model to decompose total energy consumption into end-use
components.
How many end-use models does RECS have?
RECS has five separate, independently-fitted end-use models, one for each of the main fuels:
electricity, natural gas, propane, fuel oil, and kerosene.
What is the general structure of the end-use models?
The general model structure specifies total consumption to be a sum of terms, where each term
represents an end-use component. Each end-use component, in turn, is composed of model
parameters (unknown, to be estimated) and independent (known) variables. By estimating the model parameters, the end-use components can be individually calculated, yielding the desired
disaggregation of total fuel consumption by end use.