
Tesla's New York Gigafactory Kicks Off Solar Roof Production - uptown
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-09/tesla-powers-up-new-york-gigafactory-solar-roof-assembly-line
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JohnStudio
I'm not a big fan of Elon Musk, but let's not get political.

I do however, want to point out Buffalo .. its troubles with Solar City .. and
its troubles with Elon Musk.

Key (non-disputed / non-political points)

\- Tesla did not hire local workers, and did not hold up on its end for
diversity of work-force \- SolarCity received 750$ million in the Billion to
Buffalo at a time it hadn't operated at a profit in over 2 years (I believe)
\- Ciminelli, Buffalo's prior largest construction company that built
SolarCity was charged with bid rigging / bribery by the Federal Government and
it has all but folded up shop. \- Panasonic / Tesla agreement / partnership
existed in 2006, yet Cuomo said he brokered this deal (fabrication)

The Riverbend site that SolarCity started has all but been successful in Erie
County. That's my 2c, and the above is factual, non-disputed points.

So .. my real question, is why is this not brought to the national level for
discussion to what Elon is doing to communities like Buffalo, where I live?
That's my question ...

~~~
GiorgioG
> So .. my real question, is why is this not brought to the national level for
> discussion to what Elon is doing to communities like Buffalo, where I live?
> That's my question ...

Because Buffalo isn't a place that attracts much attention about anything
outside of lake-effect snow and how terrible the Buffalo Bills are.

These silver-bullet projects that promise to bring large number of high-paying
jobs rarely pan out. Remember when Yahoo put in that data center in Lockport
(just outside of Buffalo for everyone not familiar with the area)? It was
touted as a big win...as of two years ago they have a whopping 98 employees
(most making less than 6 figures according to Glassdoor.)

[https://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/blog/science-and-
technol...](https://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/blog/science-and-
technology/2016/02/yahoo-job-count-pacing-well-in-lockport-as.html)

(I was born in Buffalo and lived there for 35 years before moving south.)

~~~
briffle
> These silver-bullet projects that promise to bring large number of high-
> paying jobs rarely pan out. Remember when Yahoo put in that data center in
> Lockport (just outside of Buffalo for everyone not familiar with the area)?
> It was touted as a big win...as of two years ago they have a whopping 98
> employees (most making less than 6 figures according to Glassdoor.)

Meanwhile, Wisconsin is bending over backward to give somewhere near $4Billion
to foxconn to build a new manufacturing facility in Wisconsin, and everytime
someone asks if they should spend that much, they get "10,000 JOBS" shouted at
them.. (even then, that seems like way too much per job, at $300,000 in direct
state subsidy per employee, if they get to 10,000, but its an impressive
sounding number). then they have local subsidies, promised freeway widening,
etc..

~~~
webXL
Wait, Wisconsin wants to "give" $4Billion to foxconn? Is that in cash or tax
breaks, in which case, are isn't Foxconn really just keeping their money?

~~~
civilian
Tax breaks are pretty much the same as cash-over-time, come on.

~~~
webXL
No, you come on. You are not giving me the money in my bank account just
because you say I don't have to give it to you.

~~~
civilian
Dude I'm as libertarian as they come; taxation is theft. But you're doing
stupid things with semantics here. The company has more money to operate with;
we're just talking about this from a business-operation point of view.

~~~
ajnin
I'm curious, as a libertarian, how do you come to the conclusion that private
property, which is a political construct, is a good thing, while taxation,
which is also a political construct, established by the same set of laws, is a
bad thing (If judging by your description of one being "theft" of the other) ?

~~~
civilian
I think that private property can be easily derived from individual rights.
The right to control my own life, the right to do what I want, the right not
to be interfered with. Those set a pretty strong precedent for private
property. If I create something out of nothing, shouldn't I be able to keep
that?

I could be down with taxation if someone actually offered me a contract to
join the USA with all the provisions. But they didn't, they just implicitly
assumed it, without my consent.

~~~
intended
Why would I care about individual rights if there is no government ?

I mean if I have enough power and there’s no one to stop me, I may as well
take your property AND your person and make you work for me.

It’s just a matter of who has the most guns, and my willingness to cheat on
the rules of the game.(you assume individual rights, I don’t)

Do note this is more of a tongue in cheek question, than a serious one.

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kodis
I really love the work that Tesla is doing in this area, and wish them all the
luck in the world, but if the estimates in the article are even close ($57K
for a Tesla roof, $41K for a tile roof with a small solar panel, $22K for a
conventional asphalt roof) it's hard for me to see this being cost effective.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
It's like any sort of tech: the first version is too expensive and then the
price drops some % every year until we all have "supercomputers" in our
pockets.

Plain Solar Panel (non roof) installation has gone from $52k to $20k in the
last decade [1] which is craziness.

The other aspect of this is longevity. Setting all solar power generation
aspects aside an asphalt roof will generally last 20-25 years. Tesla roof
tiles appear to last much longer (infinite warranty, etc.) and are maybe more
comparable to a slate roof which would be 10x the cost of an asphalt roof.

As a reference point, I grew up in a house built in the 1920s and just
confirmed via Google Streetview that it still has it's original slate roof.

1 - [https://news.energysage.com/solar-panel-efficiency-cost-
over...](https://news.energysage.com/solar-panel-efficiency-cost-over-time/)

~~~
tbabb
20-25 years is at the limit of what I could imagine staying in one house with
any certainty. How does the extra longevity justify the cost unless I plan to
never ever move again?

~~~
michaelbuckbee
It goes to the home's value (aka you'd get more when you sell it). I kind of
think of it like brick. Brick has a much longer maintenance cycle than vinyl
or wood siding.

~~~
bkjelden
The is true in theory, but in practice the housing market isn't 100%
efficient.

You'll no doubt recoup some of your value, but not all of it.

~~~
FireBeyond
Part of our bubble is that at times it's been "more than 100% efficient", so
to speak.

Witness dozens of TV shows, "You guys had $50K for your reno budget. Your
original value was $250K, and you spent $50K and now your house is worth
$350K!"

~~~
lazerpants
Your example doesn't show excessive value capture for the upgrades in the
home. Rather, for the extra 50k in bank loaned money, the buyer is choosing
not to engage in renovation for reasons typically related to: inconvenience,
time restrictions, lack of vision, etc.

------
reaperducer
Every time Tesla talks about a "gigafactory" like this one, or the one in
Reno, I'm reminded of the episode of The Simpsons, where a snake oil salesman
comes to town and sells Springfield on the idea of building a monorail.

It's a factory. Yes, a big factory. But not bigger than a hundred that came
before it. And even if it was, it doesn't warrant a new word.

~~~
simonsarris
So what? It's a clever and catchy name. Giga sounds ambitious and is also a
common prefix when talking about energy.

Did you know that everyone who buys a Tesla is not, in fact, purchasing a dead
Serbian-American guy?

~~~
reaperducer
In five years it's going to sound as dated and stupid as all the "cyber"
branded things from the 90's.

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monochromatic
I like the idea of a solar roof, but the incentives just don’t work out where
I live. We have lots of sun, so I could plausibly produce quite a bit of
excess power... but my electric company won’t buy it from me. The most they’ll
do is let me offset my own consumption.

So my upside is capped at getting free electricity, which’ll save me $100-150
a month. That’s not nothing, but it’ll take a LONG time to recoup the cost.

~~~
castratikron
That's when you start using your excess power to mine crypto and get $0.50/kWh
instead of the $0.03/kWh that your utility would give you.

~~~
monochromatic
That’s... crazy talk. I like it.

------
frandroid
Okay, the tiles are made of glass. Does the carbon footprint of the
fabrication different much from terracotta tiles?

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snowball2
Looking forward to them being available in the UK, if I had't just re-roofed
my house with recycled slates I'd have used these, I didn't use the option
from Solar Century because they look terrible compared with the glass slates
from Tesla: [https://www.solarcentury.com/homes-uk/our-
offer/sunstation/](https://www.solarcentury.com/homes-uk/our-
offer/sunstation/) \-- however I do have a lot of respect for the founder of
the company [http://www.energylivenews.com/2015/01/12/solarcentury-
founde...](http://www.energylivenews.com/2015/01/12/solarcentury-founder-
steps-down/)

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sgruetter
OT: Is there a reliable Firefox to block these annoying Bloomberg auto-play
videos?

~~~
vlod
Mine don't play in FF. I think you can disable this via:
media.autoplay.enabled

type about:config in url and set value to false

~~~
sgruetter
Thanks, that worked, although YouTube affected, too. Well, better than
unexpected auto-play.

~~~
sgruetter
Update: Does also not-auto-play gifs/gifv on imgur, thus it's not really a
solution.

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ZoomStop
Why do they call them all a "gigafactory"? This is getting ridiculous since
the subject "gigafactory" in the article is a million square feet and 500
employees.

~~~
gknight
> The name Gigafactory comes from the word “Giga,” the unit of measurement
> representing “billions.” The factory’s planned annual battery production
> capacity is 35 gigawatt-hours (GWh), with one GWh being the equivalent of
> generating (or consuming) 1 billion watts for one hour. This is nearly as
> much as the entire world’s current battery production combined.

via [https://www.tesla.com/gigafactory](https://www.tesla.com/gigafactory)

Doesn't explain why they call Buffalo's operation a "Gigafactory," but that's
the origin of the name for the more well-known Nevada-based Gigafactory.

~~~
infogulch
I wonder what their expected total produced solar capacity will be. I feel
like it could be over a gigawatt, in line with the battery gigafactory.

------
JohnStudio
The postmortem comment to this thread, is kind of buried in the distressed
communities report posted today from The Atlantic.

Page 35, pretty much sums it all up.

[http://eig.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2017-Distressed-
Co...](http://eig.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2017-Distressed-Communities-
Index.pdf)

------
mmsimanga
Just over two years ago solar panels were prohibitively expensive for me. I
read a couple of Instructables showing how to make your own panel using solar
cells. I ordered the solar cells. The plan was to cover the whole garage roof
with solar cells.

The price of solar panels dropped. Now I have a box full of solar cells and it
just isn't worth it to go the DIY route. The Solar Roof is out of my price
range.

~~~
OrwellianChild
Frustrating to see prices change, but it sounds like you were up for doing the
work at the old price, so it could be a learning opportunity...

Alternatively, you might be able to sell the cells (at a loss) to recoup some
funds and still end up with solar power for cheaper than you were originally
intending to pay!

~~~
mmsimanga
Thanks for the encouraging response. I will use the solar cells as a learning
opportunity. I am thinking that they will be a good way to teach kids the
basics of solar power.

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SQL2219
...Solar shingles will cost more than a conventional roof along with
photovoltaic panels -- but not “wickedly so,” said Hugh Bromley, a New York-
based Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyst. He estimates a Tesla roof would
cost about $57,000 for a 2,000-square-foot house

From where I sit that is wickedly more expensive. I had a new composite roof
installed 2 years ago for $2,900

~~~
ChuckMcM
You need to add in 2000 sq ft of solar panels, mounted. As well.

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EGreg
Why not put the solar panels on the cars themselves?

Makes them charge somewhat when parked on the street or in an open parking lot
:)

~~~
jacobkranz
The area is way too small to generate any feasible amount. If I remember
correctly you'd only be able to charge 15 miles per day in ideal conditions.

~~~
EGreg
What about solar panels on the roof of a 30 foot RV?

To power computer microwave and water heater only.

~~~
shard972
Then you really don't want to ignore any maximum height signs.

