Fusion is so useful though. It is easy to set up on ships because it requires no consumables other than the fuel cells, and it has a small footprint. It is easy to set up power on all planets by stamping down a blueprint, and requires minimal resources shipped to them. If you're not expanding the factory, you probably already have a setup that works, so I can see why it would feel useless. But, when you want to double, or 10x your power consumption, fusion makes it easy.
The real problem with fusion is it comes so late in the game that it's mostly useless if you're planning to stop when you get the victory screen.