
Tesla largely responsible for slide in U.S. home solar sales - callwaiting
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-solar/tesla-largely-responsible-for-slide-in-u-s-home-solar-sales-report-idUSKBN1E915A
======
blunte
This article completely fails to mention several other potential factors:

\- some states have reduced or removed subsidies to home owners for new solar
installations

\- solar installations are expensive and take years to pay themselves back
(and ultimately become a net gain); but homeowners are staying in one home for
shorter periods than in the past, making long-term planning less attractive

\- some utilities have pressured local governments to block or make difficult
new solar installations because of (real or perceived) problems with pushing a
lot of power back into the grid from the endpoints (homes)

\- political misinformation campaigns have convinced some simple folk that
solar is bad (or is un-patriotic since some regions, such as Texas, are so
deeply connected to oil and gas)

How much of a role these other factors have played is up for debate, but I
think it's rather disingenuous of Reuters to not even mention some of these.

~~~
perseusprime11
Solar will go big when interest in home ownership goes away due to innovations
like Uber which is reducing long term car ownership or multiple car ownership.
Once home ownership goes away and we can subscribe to smart, intelligent homes
powered by solar and other renewable energy sources, it will begin the golden
age of Solar. Unfortunately, we are still 20 years away from this vision.

~~~
pjc50
> home ownership goes away

Home ownership is the only practical way in which the general public can
access leveraged asset price inflation. There has to be big transformation in
the economy before home ownership is seen as a cost centre rather than the
most profitable investment most people will ever make.

~~~
ghaff
And is also the only way that many people can have stability in where they
they live and what they pay. Obviously different people make different
tradeoffs but, for many (especially families), it's desirable to have a high
degree of control over where you live.

~~~
pjc50
Aboslutely. Can you imagine having the Google "your account has been cancelled
and we won't even say why and there's no number you can call" experience with
your home rental service? Or your car service?

~~~
toomuchtodo
This already happens when your Uber rating declines below a 4 or so (as
drivers get to pick their riders by rating) and you can no longer get a ride.

~~~
UncleEntity
Too bad there aren't alternatives to Uber for people who can't manage to not
piss off their drivers. They don't give a bad review unless you give them a
_really_ good reason because they're more worried about their stars than a
little bit of unruliness on the part of passengers because, you know, dealing
with stupid people is 99% of the job(err...side hustle).

Sounds like the system is working exactly as intended to me.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You can’t base a public transportation network on a reputation system no more
than you can cut power and water off to people you don’t care for.

~~~
UncleEntity
They aren't a public transportation network, they are a private business.

I'm kind of curious what you were doing to the drivers since it's dog eat dog
enough out there that drivers will pretty much take any fare that's semi-
reasonable and they don't think they're going to die.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Before switching to Lyft, I had a 4.4 rating with Uber, and sometimes had to
try multiple times to get a ride. I had never been late for a pickup, was
always courteous, and never did anything to warrant less than 5 stars.

I don’t use Uber anymore, so it’s less of a personal issue and more of an
overreaching policy issue as Uber attempts (poorly) to supplant public transit
and personal vehicles with their product.

------
enjo
Utilities across the country are changing how they handle net metering (buying
back at the wholesale instead of retail rate). It greatly changes the payback
on these solar installations... I’m guessing that has more to do with any
slowdown than Tesla’s management. Not to mention that the low hanging fruit
may already be largely picked.

~~~
narrator
Wait till the masses discover cryptomining as an alternative to measly net
metering rates.

~~~
city41
I have solar and generate far more electricity than I could ever use. I
investigated cryptomining as a way to use up that electricity, and no matter
how I crunched the numbers I couldn't make it profitable.

~~~
castratikron
How did you arrive at that conclusion? Any amount of mining will be profitable
since your electricity is free. You could dig out a used Thinkpad from the
closet and even though the hashrate would be miserable, you would still be
making money since your electricity cost is zero. Of course you would probably
want to use more efficient hardware to mine, and that's in terms of $/kWh.

I've got a GPU mining ethereum right now at about $0.75/kWh. Even in my
apartment where electricity is $0.10/kWh I'm still turning a profit.

~~~
city41
Thanks, you've inspired me to take another look. When I looked into this the
first time, the $/kwh versus hardware cost never added up. I have no hardware
lying around I could use, so chances are I'd have to buy something.

There's also the opportunity cost. If getting the hardware, learning
everything and regular maintenance only nets me say a $5/month profit, it
doesn't seem worth pursuing.

It's been a few months since I researched this, I'm happy to be wrong so I'll
take another look.

------
ilaksh
The incredibly obvious thing that somehow most people are not connecting here
is the solar shingles or roofing tiles. They can't continue to push the old-
fashioned panels with the same enthusiasm at the same time as launching the
solar shingles. Combine that with the fact that they are the only producer of
those particular tiles that they are selling and have a bottleneck, and I
think that explains it.

There are other non-celebrity companies that make solar shingles, see at the
bottom of this article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_shingle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_shingle)

------
chrisgd
SolarCity was acquired because it was running out of money. There where a lot
of questions whether Tesla over paid for the asset because of Elon musk's
ownership in both companies. Not having any more money to spend on aggressive
expansion might be the biggest reason for the decline

~~~
zer00eyz
"Tesla declined to comment for this story, but has previously said that while
sales are down, margins are up. The company expects its fourth-quarter solar
installation numbers to be higher than those of the third quarter."

Lets assume what your saying is true, as is the above statement (and the
article hints that there was concern about the debt model solar city was
using).

The decline in sales and the increase in profits look like there is an attempt
to right the ship, rather than persist with a model that doesn't function
well.

~~~
prepend
Profits are increasing because they stopped expensive marketing and promotion
to attract customers. Solar city was actually losing money with new customers.

So just by Tesla stopping new customers they increase their income.

------
myrandomcomment
Waiting for the solar roof tiles. Put money down to hold a place in line.
Still waiting....

------
greglindahl
The main reason is that Tesla -- and only Tesla -- is switching business
models from having investors put solar panels on house roofs and selling the
power to the homeowner, to the homeowner buying panels. This transition has
been going on for the past 4 quarters.

The article discusses it here:

> SolarCity’s rapid growth was fueled in part by a no-money-down offering that
> enabled residential customers to pay a monthly fee to go solar. The business
> generated huge sales volumes but led to investor concern about debt.

and it's easy to see, from the published financials, that this is a large
effect.

------
njharman
According to article SolarCity was also largely responsible for the boom in
home solar sales and in building the market and lifting up other solar
companies.

------
WheelsAtLarge
Linkbait, they don't mention that Solar city was drowning in debt. There was
no way it could continue its aggressive marketing. It's one of the reasons
it's no longer an independent company. The reduction is not a reflection of
Tesla but a reflection of the overall market. People just are willing to spend
the thousands of dollars or perpetual lease to power their homes. Like it or
not, the switch to solar or similar is for the large utilities to do it. But
they won't do it unless they are forced to do it. California has started but
its now time for the rest of the country to pass some laws.

------
mtgx
> But under Tesla’s ownership, the company has largely stopped its aggressive
> marketing campaigns and ambitious expansion.

From what I heard, that was more like "aggressive salesmen." Perhaps Musk
wanted a different more Tesla-like approach to sales, then the sleazy salesman
persuading you to make the purchase at all costs. Even if that strategy
results in more revenue in the short term, maybe Musk thought he doesn't want
Tesla to be known for that type of purchase experience.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Off topic. Did you intentionally use the word _then_ after the comma in the
second sentence in the second paragraph _" then the sleazy salesman"_?

I see this a lot here on HN where I assume the word should be _than_. Is this
some regional dialect quirk?

~~~
azernik
In most American accents, the two words are homophones, so misspelling one as
the other in writing is quite common.

~~~
ballenf
I know a lot of Americans from all over the place and have never met one who
pronounces those two words the same.

At least not in the same way "pen" and "pin" are homophones in parts of the
country. Nor how they're / their / there is for everyone.

~~~
jcranmer
"than" is usually unstressed, which means it's going to be largely reduced to
a schwa. "then" would also be reduced to a schwa if it were unstressed, but it
doesn't seem to be as frequently unstressed. When trying to transcribe the
spoken thought to written text, the unstressed schwa is a lot closer to the
'e' in then than the 'a' in than, which probably explains the predilection for
choosing "then" when "than" is meant.

(I know I have a major tendency to write "then" when "than" is meant).

~~~
ghaff
I would never have said they were homonyms. That said, they're probably closer
for people speaking with a bit of a Southern drawl than they would be with
standard American pronunciation.

------
coliveira
Thankfully, the future of solar technology doesn't depend on the USA anymore.
China is the biggest producer of solar panels, and will continue to employ
solar technology for its internal development. These factors will make the US
adoption irrelevant for the development of solar technology.

------
mrfusion
How hard would it be to buy some land and build a solar farm? As an
investment.

~~~
vbuwivbiu
I'm a big fan of solar power, but solar farms are a waste of land; put them on
roofs and over parking lots instead

~~~
elihu
Land isn't such a scarce resource when you get outside the city. A centralized
solar farm is cheaper to install and easier to maintain than installing on
roofs and parking lots.

If people want solar on their roofs or in their parking lots, then by all
means they should install it, but if your goal is to deliver the cheapest cost
per killowatt-hour, then finding some vacant land away from people and putting
up a lot of panels is a good plan.

------
dmh2000
'aggressive marketing tactics'. in other words, high pressure salesmen making
dubious claims

------
agumonkey
Any physicist around here ?

to challenge musk/solarcity claims about the 100km² solar farm being
equivalent to the world energy output. Energy transport aside of course, just
as a napkin calculation thing.

~~~
echo_oddly
Average power of radiation over the whole earth is 164 W/m^2 according to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight).
Global power consumption in 2013 was 18 TW (1.575 × 10^17 Wh/y) according to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption).
So 164 W/m^2 × 100×10^6 m^2 = 16.4 GW. That's a factor of 1000. But that's
comparing to the _average_ solar radiation striking the Earth. Are there
places such as a desert which receive 1000 times the energy of the rest of the
earth?

~~~
35bge57dtjku
There are places that are closer to the equator.

