Explaining real dollar cost of imaginary power to nonengineers

Imaginary power is a real-life issue. In fact, some blackouts have been attributed to insufficient imaginary power support. Electric utilities penalize large customers financially for consuming imaginary power, because the system losses go up with increasing imaginary power consumption. Since electric utilities charge their customers for two components of power (real and imaginary), it is good for customer relations to explain the two power components. It is quite challenging to explain, to a nonengineer, the significance of an imaginary quantity for which real money is charged. This letter is an attempt to explain imaginary power without using equations or engineering jargon.