I agree with most of what you say and I previously mentioned those very things in my posts 41 and 43 and a few others. I just realize there might have been some confusion when I wrote, "You can't use megawatts. You can used energy (joules) at the rate of so many megawatts."
What I mean by that is not that you can't use the TERM 'megawatts' but that you can't use (in the sense of 'consume' or convert in some way) megawatts themselves. Energy is something you can use. Power is NOT something you can use since it is not a commodity but the RATE of using the commodity. You do not buy power (watts). You buy energy (watts times time). Therefore, what I was trying to say was that you CAN use (consume, convert) energy but you CAN'T use power.
You mention that they could have used the term 'watt hours'. I doubt if there are many reporters who know the difference between 'watts' and 'watt hours', assuming 'they' was a reporter.
You said, "Power plants are often described by the power they can generate..." 'Power' plants don't generate power! The generate (or convert) energy. Power is only an indication of how much energy they generate per second or some time interval.
I go back to my analogy that speed is to distance as power is to energy. Speed and power are time rates. The thing you want to get (distance or energy) is the product of that rate times some time. When you ride a plane, they don't generally charge you for speed, they charge for distance. The electric company doesn't charge you for power, they charge for energy.
The 'power' meter on my house spins faster when I use more energy per second. The speed of its rotation corresponds to my 'rate of energy use' (power), but I am using energy, not power. If I told the electric company I wanted to buy 1000 watts (with no length of time specified), they should tell me it is not possible. If I told them I wanted to buy 1000 watt hours, they should be able to do that. I am being picky on the terms but I want to make sure they are used correctly.
Go back to school if you ever were, and then get back to me.
Interesting interpretation. I've found it simpler to think in terms of using power, but energy being a relative metric. A conductor might be energized to a particular energy level, but completely useless unless a circuit is completed to a different energy level, thereby allowing power to be produced. The energy is neither consumed nor created, but merely converted from Chemical to Mechanical to to Electrical in a typical petroleum fired electrical generator.
With respect to simple algebraic equations, I've found it more productive to intuitively grasp the metrics of Maxwell's Eqns in differential format used simultaneously with some insight of 2nd rank tensors to better understand what is implied or generates one term from the other.