Driving factors

In energy monitoring and targeting, a driving factor is something recurrent and measurable whose variation explains variation in energy consumption.

One of the most common driving factors is the weather, expressed usually as heating or cooling degree days.

For electrical circuits feeding outdoor lighting, the number of hours of darkness can be employed.

What these examples all have in common is that on a weekly basis (say) numerical values can be recorded for each factor and one would expect particular streams of energy consumption to correlate with them either singly or in a multivariate model.

[1] Driving factors differ from static factors, such as building floor areas, which determine energy consumption but change only rarely (if at all).