The principle of ring current shielding and the concept that in an electrical circuit analogy the ring current can be treated as a pseudo-hall current flowing in parallel with the ionospheric Hall current are used here to develop a simple model for the electrical coupling between the applied potential &PHgr; associated with the Region 1 currents, and the ring current, associated with the Region 2 currents. The approach yields a formula for the radial position of the inner edge of the ring current as a function of &PHgr;, which agrees with similar formulas derived previously on the basis of different approaches. The model can be expressed in the language of electrical circuit theory as an applied potential &PHgr; driving a nonlinear RL circuit, in which the resistance R results from dissipation in the ionosphere and the inductance L from the energy of compression stored in the ring current. The formulation lends itself to a determination of the relative amounts of energy that are dissipated in the ionosphere and stored in the ring current, according to the applied potential model. If the shielding time scale L/R and the energization (i.e., substorm) time scale are comparable, as observations indicate, roughly equal amounts of energy are expended on both elements. The analysis shows that AE type geomagnetic indexes and the Dst index should bear different functional relationships to that combination of solar wind parameters that is primarily responsible for geomagnetic activity.