What is Electricity?
Electricity is a property of matter that results from the presence or movement of electric charge. Electricity is responsible for many well-known physical phenomena such as lightning, electric fields and electric currents and is put to use in industrial applications such as electric power.

Electric power is a secondary energy source, which means that we get it from the conversion of other primary sources of energy — like coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear power and other natural sources. The energy sources we use to make electricity can be renewable or non-renewable, but electricity itself is neither renewable nor non-renewable.

Measuring Electricity

Electricity is measured in units of power, called watts. It was named to honor James Watt, the inventor of the steam engine.

One watt is a very small amount of power. It would require nearly 750 watts to equal one horsepower. A kilowatt represents 1,000 watts. A kilowatt hour (kWh) is equal to the energy of 1,000 watts working for one hour. The amount of electricity a power plant generates or a customer uses over a period of time is measured in kilowatt hours.

Kilowatt hours are determined by multiplying the number of kilowatts required by the number of hours of use. For example: A 40-watt light bulb used 5 hours a day uses 200 watts of power, or 0.2 kilowatt hours of electrical energy.