STEEM Power is what gives you influence on Steemit. The more steem power you have in your wallet, the more money you give to authors of the blog content with an upvote as well as the greater the curation rewards you can earn for your post and you can also earn small interest rate for holding SP in your wallet.
So, it’s a well-designed and well-planned way to keep user engaged in platform.
Now the question arises how we can convert Steem Power (SP). But before explaining how to convert your SP to Steem I would like to explain two Term’s used in Steemit platform.
Powering up: Converting STEEM to SP is called powering up. This can be done by clicking the down arrow next to the STEEM in your wallet and selecting power up 1 STEEM = 1 Steem Power when powered up.
Power Down: Unlock SP and convert all or parts of it back to STEEM.
Once you got familiar with these terms.
This is how you can convert you Steem Power to Steem
To unlock SP and convert all or parts of it back to STEEM you must start a "Power Down" process which moves 1/13th of the STEEM Power you want to power down back into Steem (which is spendable) per week over 13 weeks. for example, if you have 2600 STEEM Power and power down all of it, you will have 200 Steem per week unlocked into something you can spend, trade, transfer or withdraw.
Caution: if you are investing in Steem Power Consider it as a long-term investment.
Source :Steem Center
