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

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21–30 of 62 posts

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

#21
post #17

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 atta…

>their biggest pain points right now are completely solvable with software.

What pain points are those?

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

#22
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…

Those operations are running heavily on borrowed money. They're currently trying to make their loan payments by increasing production, which drives the oil prices down still further.

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

#23
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…

Solar plants are completely unnecessary as solar panels can be distributed to wherever the power is needed. The grid will be obsolete before long.

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

#25

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…

Those operations are running heavily on borrowed money. They're currently trying to make their loan payments by increasing production, which drives the oil prices down still further.

The smaller operators are.

Pioneer, Apache, EOG, Continental, Concho, etc - along with a few majors that are involved - will withstand the oil decline. More specifically, they'll gobble up the smaller debt-ridden players as they collapse, accumulating vast resources for pennies on the dollar.

If someone like EOG tips over, a major like Exxon will scoop them up in the same way. Exxon would love to continue boosting its domestic holdings (after making a few big bakken acquisitions previously). Exxon for example has managed to drop its bakken production costs by 25% in less than five years.

Indeed, this process will lower the cost level US oil can be produced at even further. When the debt heavy players collapse, their existing property and assets will be liquidated for cheap, bringing down the cost for the acquirer - they won't have to pay a premium for the assets. Debt makes the net operational costs higher; if you wipe it out in bankruptcies, the total industry production costs will fall proportionally.

Simultaneously, the producers are getting a lot more production per rig. In the bakken, the average new well production has increased from 200 barrels per day to 600, in five years.

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

#26
post #17

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 atta…

Cool, I have a friend working here http://www.3megawatt.com in Munich. I had few discussions with him about their analytics solution and the solar industry in this regard - very interesting stuff. It looks like a lot of value for the solar industry would be just in copying existing solutions in other sectors into this one. I mean, analytics and finance (accruals) is a (partially) solved problem in many industries, but not in solar. They were now talking to rebuild their software infrastructure in Django, maybe I should join them.

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

#30
post #27

Anyone done a DIY solar installation recently? any links/pointers? What's the cheapest way to put this together? Are microinverters worth it? I am thinking of starting with a few 250w panels on my outhouse

No particular tips on how to do it; but at least make sure you don't put too many in serial if you're at all concerned about fire safety.

My father was once involved in a big lawsuit over fires caused by faulty junction boxes and he swore he'd never let the total wattage exceed say 500, max 800, or so watts for panels installed on a house.

After all; it only takes a single slightly faulty contact and you essentially have an improvised arc welder on the top of your roof.

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