Aclassofnonconformingfiniteelementsisconsideredinthispaper,whichiscontinuousonlyatthenodesofthequasi-uniformmesh.Weshowthatthereex-istsanessentialestimatewhichindicatestheequivalencerelation,independentofthemeshparameter,betweentheenergiesofthenonconformingdiscreteharmonicextensionsindifferentsubdomains.Theessentialestimateisofgreatimportanceintheanalysisofthenonoverlappingdomaindecompositionmethodsappliedtosecondorderpartialdifferentialequationsdiscretizedbynonconformingfiniteele-ments.
