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.”

At an average rate of 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWH), that’s 60 minutes of 1,000 watts of electricity for a dime, so a penny of electricity equates to 100 watts. It’s enough to power a 9-watt LED lightbulb—the equivalent of a 60-watt incandescent bulb—for 11 hours.

You can fully charge your iPhone more than 18 times for a penny, or once every day of the year for only 20 cents.

Not impressed? For a penny, you can: power a 1,000-watt microwave on high for 6 minutes; run a 200-watt desktop computer for 30 minutes; watch 2.5 hours of your favorite shows on a 40-watt, 32-inch, LED television or 1.3 hours on a 75-watt, 75-inch mega TV.

Unfortunately, we don’t always appreciate the value of 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.

Electricity is actually a better deal today than in 1940, when a person paid about a penny per kWH. Today the same kWH of electricity costs an average of 12 cents nationally, which means the price of electricity has increased more slowly than the cost of everything else. If electricity had increased at the same rate, it would now cost 17 cents per kWH instead of only 12 cents.