
SolarCity has signed an agreement to acquire Silevo - ph0rque
http://blog.solarcity.com/silevo/
======
felixbraun
> SolarCity was founded to accelerate mass adoption of sustainable energy. The
> sun, that highly convenient and free fusion reactor in the sky, radiates
> more energy to the Earth in a few hours than the entire human population
> consumes from all sources in a year. This means that solar panels, paired
> with batteries to enable power at night, can produce several orders of
> magnitude more electricity than is consumed by the entirety of human
> civilization.

Elon shining through here.

There is little doubt that SolarCity will be a huge deal.

~~~
rlanday
There’s a non-sequiter in that statement: the authors jump directly from “the
sun emits an enormous amount of energy” to “it is feasible to capture and
store several orders of magnitude more electricity than is currently consumed
by human civilization using only solar panels and batteries.” That is a huge,
huge leap.

~~~
myhf
It's a huge, huge leap of multiplying the wattage of a solar panel by the
number of solar panels manufactured and installed.

Looks like it would take less than 1% of the land area of the earth to satisfy
the electricity consumption of humanity many times over:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=electricity+consumed+%2...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=electricity+consumed+%2F+%281kW+%2F+square+meter%29)

It doesn't seem like much of a leap to propose covering 1% of the world with
buildings or roads or farms, so solar panels should seem the same.

~~~
scotth
I've heard this suggested before, but seriously, 5.1 million square kilometers
of solar panels? Seems to me that we're a long way off from that kind of
undertaking.

~~~
maxerickson
The link is showing 2,000 square kilometers now.

If you plug in a more reasonable value for watts (efficiency, night), it's
still tens of thousands of square kilometers, not millions.

~~~
Retric
Aka less than 1% of 1% of land is enough for solar at today's energy use
levels using 20% efficient panels. More reolistically wind and hydro are
unlikely to be completly replaced by solar any time soon.

PS: Most homes can meet there total energy needs and have room left on there
roof which says something about energy density.

~~~
rlanday
You are confusing “energy use” with “electricity use.” Things like natural gas
heating (especially if you live somewhere with really cold winters), gasoline
for ground transportation, and jet fuel for air travel, as well as all the
different ways these inputs go into, e.g., growing the food we eat and
manufacturing household items, form a very large part of the average person in
a developed country’s energy use.

~~~
Retric
Home != People otherwise I would have said People.

Anyway, Solar is actually great for home heating and hot water needs and solar
hot water is generally more cost effective to install than rooftop eletric
solar. Oddly enough installing solar pool heaters are cheap and fairly common
even though they cover a fairly small window over the course of a year.

PS: Rooftop solar ~20% efficient rooftop home heating ~90% efficient.

------
revelation
Quite interesting, particularly considering Elons name is there. Elon was
quite adamant in talking about SolarCity that they concentrate on the
consumer-facing business, not producing solar cells, which as he explained is
just slightly refined pure silicon with connectors slapped on, very much a
commodity business where state actors like China are essentially subsidizing
the West for buying solar panels in a bid to crush solar panel competition. So
he didn't want to get into that.

Maybe, as with the Gigafactory, he sees an opportunity here.

Here is Elon saying making solar panels is a bad idea:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHHwXUm3iIg#t=2960](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHHwXUm3iIg#t=2960)

~~~
jccooper
True. And yet, it's also a very Elon move: vertical integration, making a big
bet on growth, and doing so domestically in spite of theoretically lower-cost
foreign production. (You can see all those factors in Tesla and SpaceX.)

Perhaps the Silveo technology convinced him that solar cells are not always
commodity. And then he went with his usual instinct.

~~~
trhway
in vertically integrated business, even 2 times difference in the price of
some basic parts/materials may not matter if that is just a fraction of the
total price of the resulting product/service. If you own the high margin exit
point like installation of the solar systems, you may be more worried about
quality and the performance of the parts, stability of supply, etc... - the
factors which can significantly affect your downstream high-margin part of the
pipeline.

Add to that that Musk is going to own battery component of the solar systems
as well.

------
jakozaur
Silevo seems already have industry grade panels at 21% efficiency. That's
quite a lot in home/utility panels: [http://sroeco.com/solar/most-efficient-
solar-panels](http://sroeco.com/solar/most-efficient-solar-panels) (13 - 17%)

I can't find easily the price/W, but assuming they can produce panels at
similar cost that's going to be huge.

~~~
dangravell
Hmmm I might be wrong but I think that's a very specific test... they're only
comparing 200W panels. SunPower make 20-21% efficient panels already.

~~~
alphydan
The current efficiency record for research panels is around 44.7% [1] but
commercial companies are above 22% (Sanyo, Panasonic, etc) [2]

[1] [https://renooble.com/blog/2013/11/solar-panel-efficiency-
new...](https://renooble.com/blog/2013/11/solar-panel-efficiency-new-world-
record/) [2] [https://renooble.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2013/11/nrel_ef...](https://renooble.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2013/11/nrel_efficiency_chart.jpg)

~~~
dredmorbius
Greater efficiency comes with higher costs.

The maximum theoretical efficiency of solar panels is about 85% of incident
sunlight based on the physics of the photoelectric effect. I've been learning
about efficiency and cost, and was told recently that many large-scale
installations in unsecured location use 9% efficient thin-film technology
simply due to cost. Having your 20%-40% high-value panels stolen doesn't net
you benefit.

And you're still working against other constraints: a maximum insolation at
Earth's surface of around 1 kW/m^2, the local insolation rate (great tool from
NREL for mapping that within the US:
[http://maps.nrel.gov/prospector](http://maps.nrel.gov/prospector)), panel
spacing (you net about 55% area fill rate at 36 degrees latitude based on
panel angle and avoiding overlap), inverter efficiency (about 90%), capacity
factor (amount of time you're receiving full sunlight), and more. By the time
you account for all of this, you're down to about 30W of that 1 kW you can
actually deliver (time-averaged -- peak is closer to 97W). And if you want to
allow for storage, you've got even more losses. Plants start looking pretty
effective at 1-3% solar conversion rates, especially when you figure they
build themselves at the same time.

More on net solar potential:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28cvgv/calculat...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/28cvgv/calculating_estimated_solar_energy_potential/)

------
chanced
Somewhat interesting that this occurs weeks after the tariff increase on
subsidized Chinese solar panels. I wonder how closely those two events are
aligned beyond mere coincidence.

------
api
I found Elon's secret business plan!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale)

------
senthilnayagam
good move. Tesla gigafactory would produce 50 GWh battery storage, they
themselves need huge volumes of solar panels for their ever expanding charging
stations network

------
johnohara
The 35% U.S. federal subsidies for solar energy are due to expire in 2016.
That's an important consideration.

Nice coup for New York and its rebranding strategy. Doesn't Sanyo have a big
facility upstate?

Unfortunately, in all of this, we never see a discussion about individual
ownership and transfer of excess SREC's.

------
torrenza
Stock jumped 16% after that was released.

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ape4
I have a small amount of roof space so want to buy efficient panels.

~~~
dredmorbius
Focus on cost, not efficiency, really.

There's plenty of space for solar energy all told, on a net-metering or grid
basis. Unless you've got an absolutely compelling need to generate the maximum
amount of energy from a minimum space and/or weight (say: you're building a
satellite or space probe), just seek to keep $/kW as low as possible over the
anticipated life of your panels.

------
SEJeff
This is one of the companies with Elon Musk helping drive the vision. They're
going to go far.

------
jguimont
What keeps them from installing their system in every states or even Canada?

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startupfounder
Take a step back.

With 1GW of solar capacity production in NY by 2017, 50GWh of battery
production in the southwest by 2020, Tesla's and SpaceX's manufacturing
facilities in CA, Elon's distributed clean generation, storage and
transportation empire is concentrated in the USA.

All of these companies are becoming increasingly in control of their supply
and distribution channels.

What's next, is Musk going to use SpaceX to mine asteroids for their metals to
build increasingly inexpensive clean transportation, batteries and solar
hardware back here on earth?

~~~
toomuchtodo
What did Dune say? "He who controls the Spice controls the Universe?" Carbon-
based energy sources will not last forever, and even if they outlast us, using
them will be catastrophic to the environment.

Elon is positioning himself as the provider of plentiful, clean energy
generation and storage to the world (not to mention the provider of mobility
and space transport). Is it too early to compare him to Rockefeller?

~~~
hueving
>What did Dune say? "He who controls the Spice controls the Universe?" Carbon-
based energy sources will not last forever, and even if they outlast us, using
them will be catastrophic to the environment.

That presupposes nothing can ever be done about the CO2 offset.

>Is it too early to compare him to Rockefeller?

That would be an insult to him. Standard Oil did some of the shadiest anti-
competitive stuff that resulted in many of the laws to protect against
monopolies today. I assume you've seen the famous octopus drawing[1]? That
didn't become popular because people thought Standard Oil was giving a warm
hug to society.

The patent release alone shows his intentions are much difference from
Rockefeller's.

1\.
[http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_oil_octopus_...](http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Standard_oil_octopus_loc_color.jpg)

~~~
ameister14
I don't think you're giving Rockefeller enough credit. He learned a lesson
from the Pennsylvania oil fields and their destructive competition, i.e.
competition isn't always good. By monopolizing the oil industry, he actually
lowered the cost of oil for consumers something like 10x, while at the same
time standardizing its quality.

Right now companies like Uber and Lyft are breaking the law providing their
services. If the cabbies win their fight, should the founders of both
companies be demonized? You could call what they do shady, and the same goes
for Airbnb.

Further, if the daughter of a medallion owner that was put out of business by
Uber came to write the definitive biography of Garrett Camp, do you think it
would be unbiased?

That's what happened with Rockefeller.

~~~
salemh
A great read is Titan, which follows his rise to the "Titan" he was. He was a
genius with engineering (re-designing physical oil barrels), operations,
finance, scale, industrialization, almost everything.

He is credited with creating modern medicinal research (though he detested it
himself), and all around, was a highly unique character in history.

Not withstanding him destroying his competition and consolidating the market,
with the goal of lowering kerosene (I may have the wrong oil-type here) by 95%
as a goal for "giving to the masses."

Still many, many, many despicable acts, but a multi-dimensional man of course.

[http://www.amazon.com/Titan-The-Life-John-
Rockefeller/dp/140...](http://www.amazon.com/Titan-The-Life-John-
Rockefeller/dp/1400077303) * While providing abundant new evidence of
Rockefeller's misdeeds, Chernow discards the stereotype of the cold-blooded
monster to sketch an unforgettably human portrait of a quirky, eccentric
original. A devout Baptist and temperance advocate, Rockefeller gave money
more generously--his chosen philanthropies included the Rockefeller
Foundation, the University of Chicago, and what is today Rockefeller
University--than anyone before him. Titan presents a finely nuanced portrait
of a fascinating, complex man, synthesizing his public and private lives and
disclosing numerous family scandals, tragedies, and misfortunes that have
never before come to light. _

------
dang
We changed the title to the first part of the lede, since it says what the
article is about.

~~~
tomp
Is this the new policy? Should we also post subtitles/ledes instead of titles,
if they make the post more informative?

~~~
dang
I wouldn't call it a new policy, but sure: what I look at are document title,
article title, top subtitle, and first sentence of the article, in that order.
If the latter is significantly better than the article title, we sometimes use
it, like we did here.

A good HN title is accurate and neutral (the opposite of misleading and
linkbait). Rewriting is bad; it's far better to use words that are already
there than to make up words of one's own. Taking words out in order to fit the
80-char limit is ok. Editorializing and spin are right out. Faithfulness to
the original content (unless it is misleading or linkbait) is paramount. I
think that's about it.

------
kudithipudi
The team @SolarCity and @Tesla continue to push the boundaries . I think this
is going to change the landscape :)

------
kbenson
I like the section on "Forward-Looking Statements". While I'm sure some will
take it as weasel-words to cover his ass (and I suspect if it was absent many
of these people would find something -anything- else to critique), I think
it's just prudence.

It comforts me to see a big announcement with a caveat, because I feel they
are trying to be accurate instead of bombastic.

~~~
300bps
Forward Looking Statements are a boilerplate disclaimer that publicly traded
companies typically include anytime they talk about anything other than
historical fact. If they don't include them and their plans change, they are
at serious risk of being sued by their shareholders.

See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward-
looking_statement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward-looking_statement)

~~~
kbenson
I assumed as much (the SEC statement in it makes it fairly obvious). I almost
threw in a few sentences about how I think if this is because the SEC, it's a
very good side effect of informing investors.

I think the effect a statement like this has on normal people reading is to
allow the original article to inform and excite while also containing
expectations. It can dampen the _more excitable_ of the populace, as well as
those who like to set them off.

In all, regardless of _why_ the statement is there, I think the fact that it
_is_ present is a good thing. I wasn't exactly assigning credit to Elon for it
(the swipe at critics may have made it seem so), just talking in generalities.

