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(Edit - the question is now different so my comment is stale)

My understanding is power is expended when current flows through a metal with resistance, and that loss is in the form of heat. The lower the resistance, the lower the loss and therefore lower the heat

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But you do lose energy as current flows.

When you start with 10 elecrons on the left of the wire and none on the right and end up with 5 on both sides, you lost all energy that was stored in the system.

The mind-blowing thing is that electrons, as far as I understand it, don't actually flow through wires at all. If they did AC power would be pointless

Well they do but very slowly. With AC they just wiggle left and right.

This is some kind of a simplified view of how a battery works. It is not how an electric field functions.

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