
Tesla CTO: Batteries and Solar Will Lead to Cheap Electricity Within 10 Years - prostoalex
http://www.forbes.com/sites/uciliawang/2015/07/14/tesla-cto-batteries-solar-will-lead-to-cheap-electricity-within-10-years/
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snowwrestler
> 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 calling is too cheap to meter.

It's not just that the price fell, although it did. It's that better
technologies came along--cell phones and Internet--and the remaining cost of
long distance just become embedded in them.

It's interesting to think of where energy generation or storage costs might
become embedded. Homes? Cars? Appliances?

How much energy storage do you have in your house right now? Looking around
right now, I've got 3 laptops, 2 tablets, and a smartphone in view. We're
slowly accumulating watt-hours, just as a side effect of buying mobility.

~~~
Consultant32452
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.

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

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

------
sitkack
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.

~~~
adventured
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 and make fracking even cheaper. What people seem to fail to
understand about fracking, is that it's a shift in technology, not a temporary
blip. It will continue to get cheaper and more efficient, and it will spread
globally, leading to a wave of oil for decades. Just wait until you see what
US frackers can do in Mexico with a liberalized oil market there.

As an example of technology making fracking cheaper, meet re-fracking:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-06/refracking...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-06/refracking-
fever-sweeps-across-shale-industry-after-oil-collapse)

~~~
ohsnap
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.

~~~
adventured
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.

~~~
breischl
Drilling a well takes a long time, and it typically is not worth stopping part
way. So it takes a long time for output to respond to price signals.

Most of the increased capacity is due to wells that were started before the
prices dropped. You'll see the output dropping once those wells start tapering
off, and no new ones are coming online to keep up the supply.

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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](http://energy.gov/eere/sunshot/reducing-non-hardware-costs)

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

[3]:
[http://www.solarindustrymag.com/e107_plugins/content/content...](http://www.solarindustrymag.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.13981)

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

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

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

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

What pain points are those?

~~~
jerf
"customer acquisition, marketing, distribution, project development,
permitting, monitoring, analytics. etc."

(I'm not vouching for this, I have no personal experience.)

~~~
diafygi
Yep, you'd be amazed at how much solar work is still done in Excel and on pen
and paper.

~~~
spathi_fwiffo
I imagine most contractors for all forms of construction are still working on
paper or in spreadsheets. What makes solar so different that some
organizational software will slash consumer prices? I guess from a sales,
customer acquisition, permitting point of view at least.

I guess if we are talking advanced mathematics to pick out optimal
installation patterns and angles (for fixed position panels), maybe this is
where the software would be useful.

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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.]

~~~
coryrc
Almost none of the solar installations today can run with the grid down.
Almost all are grid-tie because it is thousands of dollars cheaper.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Hmm, while your statement is technically correct it is also ignoring all of
the hype around Tesla's "whole house battery" technology which is, as part of
its positioning in the market, turning grid tied installations into more stand
alone installations. And yes, it is "thousands of dollars" cheaper to do a
grid tie system, and yet the regulatory changes are making it harder on home
solar systems to recover costs (mostly because it shifts peak load costs
toward the utility and away from the individual rate payer, the utilities are
trying to avoid that).

And the article is discussing a "future" world where almost all individual
houses are _not_ grid tied, rather they are perhaps grid backed up, in the
event that there isn't enough solar or wind to keep their house batteries up.

So in that world, where folks are converting their "old" grid tied system to
the "new" grid independent systems, it is going to change other parts of the
community that break when external events disrupt the grid. That will mean
that communities will be less impacted by the "grid" getting knocked off line
by a hurricane because their normal mode will be to not be on that grid. And
that has some positive implications for community planners.

------
decasteve
I think it is time for JB to take over as CEO so that Elon can spend more time
at SpaceX (and still be chairman of Tesla).

~~~
coob
I don't think that's going to happen until the Model 3 is launched.

------
JohnyLy
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 of electricity increased a lot
there. I'd say electricity costs will go up first (because of high
investments) and then will decrease.

~~~
prostoalex
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...](https://gigaom.com/2015/01/20/a-special-report-the-rise-of-a-mega-
solar-panel-farm-why-its-important/)

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...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-15/acwa-power-wins-
contract-to-build-dubai-solar-plant-acwa-ceo)

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.

------
obstinate
Electricity already is very cheap. But I'm happy to know that it will be even
cheaper, and cleaner.

------
dlitz
Does anyone know what's the latest news about long-distance superconducting
cables?

~~~
jdjdps
Its waiting on room temp superconductors I believe. Otherwise you have to cool
a 1000km of cable and of course the material needs to be reasonable ductable.
And dont hold your breath on room temperature superconductors, it may not even
be possible...

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dharma1
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

~~~
mtrimpe
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.

~~~
fredkbloggs
More generally, you need to be aware of the ratings and proper installation
methods for the equipment and materials you are using. Nearly all PV modules
today are rated for a 600V system voltage, as are most combiner boxes and
common wire types. Not all breakers are, though! Higher voltage requires
higher-rated and sometimes more expensive equipment as well as more careful
work, but it allows longer wire runs with less copper which saves money, and
it may enable you to use more efficient equipment as well. All depends on what
you're trying to accomplish. If you aren't comfortable doing a 600V (or 300V,
or 150V) wiring job, you need to weigh the disadvantages of lower system
voltages (less flexible, more costly to wire, limited options for batteries
and other equipment) against the cost of hiring someone qualified to do the
work.

I don't subscribe to the idea that a rooftop system should be limited to 800W.
An 800W system is not viable for grid-tied use (with modern modules you're
looking at 3 modules in series which will not even give you 120V much less the
required 340 or 480 to do proper grid-tied installation), and will not be
cost-effective for an off-grid application unless you have a very small house,
minimal power needs, and have a sunny climate year-round.

Know your needs. Know your abilities. Know your equipment. Safety first should
not be in conflict with building a cost-effective system that meets your
needs; if you can't figure out how to do so properly, hire someone who knows!

~~~
mtrimpe
I'm not that up to date on the whole solar thing but I guess he then probably
recommended not exceeding 600V (not W) for private uses.

The lawsuits were over high end equipment with higher ratings (I'm guessing
voltage-wise) that had a small possible weakness which, when combined with
installation which was too rough, ended up causing fires in hay-barns all over
France.

