Grid Connection

Ever since he'd gone to the university to teach a physics class, Lu Zhou had barely left the house all week.

Back in Princeton, he had at least driven to the nearby Walmart for groceries. Now he even had someone else do the shopping.

Lu Zhou felt bad about always asking Wang Peng to handle things outside his job, but after feeling bad about it enough times, he'd grown used to it.

Meanwhile, quite a few things had happened outside during his week in seclusion.

The biggest development was probably at East Asia Power.

The newly reorganized East Asia Power reached an agreement with the State Grid Su Province Electric Power Company the day after Lu Zhou shut himself away. At the same time, all twelve Magnetohydrodynamic Generator Units at Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant finally completed their last round of testing and officially began supplying the grid with clean, inexpensive electricity at a price that was still profitable.

Across Su Province, the place where the effects of connecting the Pangu Fusion Reactor to the grid were most immediately felt—apart from Haizhou, which was right next door—was probably Gusu.

This industrial powerhouse in the heart of the Yangtze River Delta supported a huge share of Hua Nation's high-tech industry. Despite having a population of just over ten million, its annual electricity consumption had nearly caught up with neighboring Shanghai's. It had passed 50 billion kilowatt-hours years ago and was now heading toward 200 billion.

With the Pangu Fusion Reactor officially connected to the grid, policy coordination brought industrial electricity rates in Su Province down by nearly half.

For the province's manufacturers, it was a windfall.

In power-hungry industries such as semiconductor manufacturing, production costs fell visibly.

With the global economy in a slump, the reactor's connection to the grid was like