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Tesla CTO: Batteries and Solar Will Lead to Cheap Electricity Within 10 Years

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Re: Tesla CTO: Batteries and Solar Will Lead to Cheap Electricity Within 10 Years

#11

Post by ChuckMcM »

Its an interesting proposition, although I'm not sure that you can really make that leap with just solar, wind, and batteries. There is a lot of base load to make up for.

I could see however individual houses become independent of the grid. And that will have tremendous benefits when things like storms hit, no longer knocking out power to residents, simply factories and office buildings and street lights. Presumably with a more simplified infrastructure that could be protected and repaired more easily.

[side note the unexpurgated page had 150+ tracking tools attempt to load according to ghostery! That is a record for me so far.]

Re: Tesla CTO: Batteries and Solar Will Lead to Cheap Electricity Within 10 Years

#12

Post by nitrogen »

adventured wrote: post #10
sitkack wrote: post #3

Utility grade solar already has a less then 8 year payback. For profit companies are setting up money making solar plants in the SW right now. Solar here. I applaud the Saudis for shutting off fracking in US. It was kinda like a fever that cleared the system of pathogens.

Saudi Arabia hasn't shut off fracking in the US in any respect. As of July 3rd, US crude oil production was 9.6 million barrels per day. The highest in at least 32 years. This is one year after the price of oil began to plunge. Since December / January, when oil particularly got cheaper, US crude production has expanded another 5%. In fact, the Saudis have accomplished the effect of forcing US companies to innovate a…

As of July 3rd, US crude oil production was 9.6 million barrels per day. The highest in at least 32 years. This is one year after the price of oil began to plunge. Since December / January, when oil particularly got cheaper, US crude production has expanded another 5%.

What is the rate of exploration and drilling? Surely that has slowed. Also, what about natural gas?

Re: Tesla CTO: Batteries and Solar Will Lead to Cheap Electricity Within 10 Years

#13

Post by ohsnap »

adventured wrote: post #10
sitkack wrote: post #3

Utility grade solar already has a less then 8 year payback. For profit companies are setting up money making solar plants in the SW right now. Solar here. I applaud the Saudis for shutting off fracking in US. It was kinda like a fever that cleared the system of pathogens.

Saudi Arabia hasn't shut off fracking in the US in any respect. As of July 3rd, US crude oil production was 9.6 million barrels per day. The highest in at least 32 years. This is one year after the price of oil began to plunge. Since December / January, when oil particularly got cheaper, US crude production has expanded another 5%. In fact, the Saudis have accomplished the effect of forcing US companies to innovate a…

Counting new rigs/new investment is much better metric, and rig counts have responded to pricing pressure by stopping drilling. Counting current crude is just measuring what happened before the Saudis dropped the prices.

Most fracking companies are pretty bloated right now and they have plenty of things they can do to improve returns w/o new tech. But lower gas prices means higher risk - thus less investment.

Re: Tesla CTO: Batteries and Solar Will Lead to Cheap Electricity Within 10 Years

#14

Post by prostoalex »

JohnyLy wrote: post #9

Electricity will become cheaper thanks to renewable energies (Solar, Wind...) and energy storage improvements (Batteries). But, I think we should point out that those energies represent large investments at first. For instance, building solar electricity plants is very expensive, the same way as Wind power. Germany is a good example: they stopped nuclear plants to increase their renewable energy production but costs…

The cost of solar production is highly dependent on geography, and in some places, like California, Nevada or Arizona deserts cheap land and good weather allows for massive economies of scale https://gigaom.com/2015/01/20/a-special-report-the-rise-of-a...

Countries with sunny deserts do get an economic edge on this one though compared to overcast, densely populated countries http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-15/acwa-power...

But there's no turning back - once the newcomer into space gets a massive economic advantage by having access to cheap energy, they attract industries that are relying on cheap energy, and soon those market participants overrun their competitors whose cost structure includes higher energy costs.

Re: Tesla CTO: Batteries and Solar Will Lead to Cheap Electricity Within 10 Years

#15

Post by prostoalex »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #4
snowwrestler wrote: post #2

> Straubel ended his talk with a slide that featured a quote from Sheikh Yamani, a former Saudi oil minister: "The stone age came to an end not for lack of stones. And the oil age will come to an end not for lack of oil." I remember when calling long distance was a big deal. It cost real money, and multiple big companies specialized in it and competed fiercely. Today for Internet connected folks, long distance phone…

I anxiously await the plucky zoning committee that decides to make it a zoning requirement that all new roofs must be made of solar panels.

If you're a house owner in California, what economic motivation is there to not do it?

Re: Tesla CTO: Batteries and Solar Will Lead to Cheap Electricity Within 10 Years

#16

Post by NeutronBoy »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #4
snowwrestler wrote: post #2

> Straubel ended his talk with a slide that featured a quote from Sheikh Yamani, a former Saudi oil minister: "The stone age came to an end not for lack of stones. And the oil age will come to an end not for lack of oil." I remember when calling long distance was a big deal. It cost real money, and multiple big companies specialized in it and competed fiercely. Today for Internet connected folks, long distance phone…

I anxiously await the plucky zoning committee that decides to make it a zoning requirement that all new roofs must be made of solar panels.

In most of Australia, while on new properties you don't have the include solar panels specifically, you do have do meet a particular energy rating. The easy ways of doing this are heaps of insulation, solar panels, and solar hot water. Also, water tanks and water-saving shower heads are mandatory.

Re: Tesla CTO: Batteries and Solar Will Lead to Cheap Electricity Within 10 Years

#17

Post by diafygi »

I have a startup in solar software, and the big thing that I don't think people here realize is that 64% of the installed cost of solar in the U.S. is soft costs (i.e. not hardware)[1]. The industry is incredibly inefficient when it comes to customer acquisition, marketing, distribution, project development, permitting, monitoring, analytics. etc. There's a huge effort by the DOE[2] and the industry itself[3] to attack soft costs with software and process improvements. The vast majority of innovation in solar over the next decade will be in software.

However, strangely, much of the startup community remains uninvolved. Why? The solar industry is expected to grow by 100-200x over the next 30-40 years[4], even when it's already a $14 billion dollar industry[5]. And yet, this week in SF, there's a huge solar conference[6], and I personally know most of the software companies there (there's only a few dozen of us). Why isn't more of the startup community coming in an "disrupting" solar software along side us? We just got $100k in free money from the DOE. We closed a seed round in less than 6 weeks. Pretty much every solar software company we know (including us) is hiring. Yet when I go to normal bay area startup events, no one there has any any clue that solar is taking off like a rocket ship and their biggest pain points right now are completely solvable with software.

Come join us. In the last few years, the solar industry reached "grid parity", which means that the unsubsidized installed cost is now cheaper than buying power from the grid. That's why this industry is the fastest growing industry in the country. This isn't some subsidy-dependent industry anymore. We work hard and we make real money (while conveniently also saving the planet).

[1]: http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/reducing-non-hardware-costs

[2]: http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/soft-costs

[3]: http://www.solarindustrymag.com/e107_plugins/content/content...

[4]: http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/

[5]: http://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-industry-data

[6]: https://www.intersolar.us/en/home.html

Re: Tesla CTO: Batteries and Solar Will Lead to Cheap Electricity Within 10 Years

#18

Post by rconti »

prostoalex wrote: post #15
Consultant32452 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I anxiously await the plucky zoning committee that decides to make it a zoning requirement that all new roofs must be made of solar panels.

If you're a house owner in California, what economic motivation is there to not do it?

Falling solar costs. Next year's deal will be even better than this year's deal. And so on.

Re: Tesla CTO: Batteries and Solar Will Lead to Cheap Electricity Within 10 Years

#19

Post by adventured »

ohsnap wrote: post #13
adventured wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saudi Arabia hasn't shut off fracking in the US in any respect. As of July 3rd, US crude oil production was 9.6 million barrels per day. The highest in at least 32 years. This is one year after the price of oil began to plunge. Since December / January, when oil particularly got cheaper, US crude production has expanded another 5%. In fact, the Saudis have accomplished the effect of forcing US companies to innovate a…

Counting new rigs/new investment is much better metric, and rig counts have responded to pricing pressure by stopping drilling. Counting current crude is just measuring what happened before the Saudis dropped the prices. Most fracking companies are pretty bloated right now and they have plenty of things they can do to improve returns w/o new tech. But lower gas prices means higher risk - thus less investment.

It's not a better metric. The only metric that matters, is output. The US is producing one million more barrels per day than a year ago. The only thing the reduction in rigs will cause, is slowing down growth.

The Saudis weren't the primary cause of the price drop anyway. The US dollar going on its greatest run in decades is what broke the price of oil. The strong dollar also caused the low price of oil in the late 1990s. The US dollar is the only thing that coincides with the drop in the price of oil. Global oil production had been in significant over-production for years prior to the price falling.

Re: Tesla CTO: Batteries and Solar Will Lead to Cheap Electricity Within 10 Years

#20

Post by adventured »

nitrogen wrote: post #12
adventured wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saudi Arabia hasn't shut off fracking in the US in any respect. As of July 3rd, US crude oil production was 9.6 million barrels per day. The highest in at least 32 years. This is one year after the price of oil began to plunge. Since December / January, when oil particularly got cheaper, US crude production has expanded another 5%. In fact, the Saudis have accomplished the effect of forcing US companies to innovate a…

As of July 3rd, US crude oil production was 9.6 million barrels per day. The highest in at least 32 years. This is one year after the price of oil began to plunge. Since December / January, when oil particularly got cheaper, US crude production has expanded another 5%. What is the rate of exploration and drilling? Surely that has slowed. Also, what about natural gas?

The US was able to ramp up the shale / fracking oil boom and nearly double production in just seven years. It's a key that can be turned at any time if oil goes above a certain level. Exploration isn't an issue, they know where the oil is, and can tap into it at any time. Take for example the Spraberry/Wolfcamp field in Texas, it's almost entirely untouched, and is one of the world's largest oil fields.

Natural gas has a massive, perpetual domestic demand basis. That isn't going to change unless the price of natural gas goes up three or four fold from here. Coal plants are being shuttered, coal has gone from ~45% to ~30% of US energy production in a decade, while natural gas has become the #1 energy supplier in the US.

The US has essentially infinite natural gas, as far as consumption in the next hundred years is concerned. It's a non-issue in any direction.

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