A fusion power plant delivers net electricity to a grid

The point where fusion stops being an experiment: a plant that puts more electricity onto a grid than it draws, for long enough to count. Several private plants are scheduled to try in the early 2030s. Fusion on the ground is the technology base that any fusion drive, and any large off-Earth power plant that cannot rely on the Sun, would be built from.

The test: what counts as it having happened

A fusion power plant exports net electrical energy to a public grid over a continuous period of at least thirty days, net of all electricity drawn by the site from any source and of any change in stored energy over the period, with the generation attributed to fusion by the plant operator and net export confirmed by the grid operator's metering.

Settled by: The grid operator's metering record and the plant operator's report

The odds, by how long I live

baselineto 2071 ± 8	moderateto 2080	strongto 2095	radicalto 2136	openno deadline
60%	70%	85%	93%	95%

Each column is a different guess at how long I live, from current trends (baseline) to open-ended. The number is the chance this happens before that deadline, assuming everything it depends on happens first. As of September 19th, 2026.

Why these numbers: Several private plants target the early 2030s; first attempts usually miss, but forty-five years and several routes make a first success more likely than not.

What this one is worth

Nothing. The headline number does not rest on this step at any remove, so however it turns out, the chance that I live and work off Earth does not change. That is not a judgement that it does not matter. It is what the tree says: this step feeds a tier above the one the headline asks about, or sits beside the equation rather than in it.

What the ledger says about this step

• Forty-one steps had their criteria tightened so that two readers would agree when each has happened, with no number moved for that alone 2026-09-20 The tree itself changed

The last 3 checks

Once a week the tree is read against the news, node by node, against the test above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every check ever made on this node is on the Radar page.

• 2026-11-01 Nothing new

  No fusion plant exports electricity to a grid; Helion Orion (2028 target) and CFS ARC (early 2030s, PJM interconnection filing) are plans, and SPARC has not yet shown net energy.

• 2026-10-04 Nothing new

  No fusion plant exported net electricity. Helion's Orion is under construction with a grid connection required by end of 2028 and SPARC is not designed to produce electricity.

• 2026-09-19 No change

  On September 8th, 2026 Helion's public affairs director publicly walked back the company's 2028 target for full operation of its 50 megawatt Microsoft power purchase agreement. Commonwealth Fusion's grid-interconnection application, filed before this window, remains in an early multi-year review. No fusion plant has exported net electricity to any grid.

  source 1source 2

Revisions

Date	Field	From	To	Why
2026-09-19	resolution	net export at the grid meter only	net of all electricity drawn by the site from any source and of any change in stored energy over the period, with the generation attributed to fusion by the plant operator	Step 27 outside-model review, item 65 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md): a site with auxiliaries on a separate feed, or one draining a battery over the month, or a hybrid site, could otherwise have met the meter test. Decided September 19th, 2026.

Notes

Drafted with a hard dependency on cheap superconducting wire; removed at step 7 (September 8th, 2026) because only the magnet route needs it and laser and other routes do not. The link stays in the mechanism of the fusion drive node. Now depends on a plant having started construction, which has happened.

---

Think this estimate is wrong? Here's how to tell me, and what happens next. The record itself is data/E-energy.toml in the public repository.