By Curtis Condon, Ruralite Magazine
What does a penny buy these days? Not much. The government can’t even make a penny for a penny anymore. According to the U.S. Mint, it now costs 1.5 cents to produce one.
About the only thing of value you can still get for a penny is electricity. You might call it “penny electricity.”
Using Colorado’s average rate of a little over 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, you get 60 minutes of 1,000 watts of electricity for that 12 cents. That means a single penny of electricity equates to 83 watts. That is enough to power a 9-watt LED lightbulb — the equivalent of a 60-watt incandescent bulb — for 9 hours, all for only a penny.
A penny’s worth of electricity allows you to fully charge your iPhone more than 15 times or once every day for a year for just over 24 cents. Or you could charge your average laptop, with its far larger screen, for only $9 a year.
Not impressed? For only a penny, you can power a 1,000-watt microwave oven on high for five minutes; run a 200-watt desktop computer for 15 minutes; or watch an hour of your favorite show on a 79-watt, 42- inch LED television.
Unfortunately, we don’t always appreciate electricity. When our monthly electric bill comes, we open it and may complain about the cost. We don’t stop to think about the value we received for the money.
Since electric co-ops first brought electricity to rural Colorado in the 1930s and ’40s, wages and the cost of living have risen substantially. However, one thing hasn’t changed that much: the value of electricity. And today, a penny still has a lot of value when it comes to buying the electricity to power your life.