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A comment on University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fusion energy. Parent comment

Re:University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fus... by rixed on Monday May 12, 2025 @12:03PM (#43964526)
> transmission costs are half of your energy bill

Wait, what?

Wikipedia[0] seems to disagree:

> Long-distance transmission (hundreds of kilometers) is cheap and efficient, with costs of US$0.005–0.02 per kWh, compared to annual averaged large producer costs of US$0.01–0.025 per kWh

Do you maybe mean that half electrical energy dissipate between production plant and consummer? But that figure seems quite large compared to what I can find online, and this would not be a problem with "free fusion".

Care to explain?

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_transmission

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Re:University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fus... by entropicdrifter on Monday May 12, 2025 @12:22PM (#43964748)
Where I live I pay about $0.09 per kWh for generation and about that much for transmission as well. I think that's what they're referring to, the literal bill they get from their current provider.
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Re:University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fus... by lordfrito on Monday May 12, 2025 @12:28PM (#43964822)
I meant to say distribution costs not transmission. Looking at last months bill I paid $66.60 to deliver $51.76 of energy (about 56% of my total bill was delivery). The raw distribution charge alone was $49.32 or 42% of the bill. I'm not alone in these numbers, but your mileage may vary.

My point is that the infrastructure related to the delivery of energy to a physical location is a non trivial part of an energy bill, and that this part doesn't go away magically because "fusion".

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Re:University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fus... by bell-cot on Monday May 12, 2025 @03:01PM (#43966420)
Long-distance transmission, of huge quantities of electrical energy, IS very efficient.

Distributing tiny fractions of all that energy to each of millions of individual residences, then maintaining all the short/complex/low-capacity wiring needed to do that - that part ain't the least bit efficient.

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Re:University of Texas-led team solves a big problem for fus... by pfdietz on Tuesday May 13, 2025 @09:44AM (#43972933)
Total losses on the US grid are about 6%, last I checked. It could be slightly more efficient, but only slightly.
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