Short-Term TSLA Price Movements - 2016

[Stretch2727]

Impressed with glass tiles from a cosmetic stand point.

2 concerns I have not see addressed:

-How are all those tiles electrically connected together? Could be both a reliability concern and/or a lot of labor to connect.

-Small individual tiles could be more labor intensive that typical shingle roof. Has any one recently watched how quickly roofers install a shingle roof with nail guns. Most can do more than 1 square (100 sq ft) in an hour even with a complex roof. On an easy roof they can do even way more. (I have an uncle in this business and he estimates the labor at 10 square/8 hour day and will almost always do better than this.)

Cannot find any details on the interconnections and roof attachment.

Were the houses at the announcement actually solar functional?

 

[Thumper]

Are these new roofs to be manufactured at the NY Solar City plant? How much of the CapX for the line is already spent? When will these roofs be available for installation? Maybe we'll find out on Monday.

 

[Thumper]

Failure of the market to react positively to all the good news and innovation from Tesla reminds me of Louis XVI who is reputed to have written in his diary for July 14, 1789 (Bastille falls) "nothing happened today"

 

[racer26]

You forgot to account, that the sun doesn't shine the same way almost half of the year. Here in California, during stormy wet weeks, solar production is negligible. You need 4-5 times larger battery, and couple the battery system with a generator to survive during those weeks if you are off-grid.

I'd say, net metering is the cheapest and longest lasting battery out there. I supply PG&E during peak hours at high rates with my solar. For each kwh I supply during peak hours, I get ~2.5 kwh at off peak hours. All I do is shift much of my demand to off peak hours.

Also, does the 10 year guarantee mean batteries will maintain charge the same way aall 10 years? Electric car batteries are not guaranteed against range loss, so I wonder.

Actually I didn't forget to account for that. The 20kW nameplate system I specified is slightly oversized for 30kWh/day usage based on 2.8 hours per day of full sun, which accounts for winter in the Northeast.

The TE cells use a different chemistry than the TA cells. The TE cells are designed for deep discharge daily.

 

[EinSV]

For the negative spin on the new solar roof plus Powerwall, Dana Hull in Bloomberg quotes a solar consultant who apparently doesn't understand the economics of TE:

Paula Mints, chief market research analyst at SPV Market Research, questions the economics of the new offering, which can be combined with a home battery.​

“Tesla announced a solar tile -- not new -- with battery that is priced below cost,” said Mints in an e-mail. “Basically Tesla announced another way to lose money.”​

Elon Musk Reveals Solar Roof Made of Glass Tiles in L.A.

Too bad Ms. Hull couldn't be bothered to find someone who actually knew what they were talking about when it came to Tesla's TE costs.

 

[EnzoXYZ]

Only in the US would a household have a problem going through a powerwall of electricity and needing multiple setup. While 98% of the world could use it for couple of days.

This solution may not work economically for the fortunate with cheap power but works wonders for the less developed countries. I'm sure many here may remember Elon say this is like skipping phone landline and jumping to cellular wireless network.

My guess next week we will still see continue down pressure on SP as this did not clear anything up with SCTY and the cash drain concerns (wasn't suppose to). Let's hope we get undisputable positive info Nov 1. And yes anything positive for Trump is bad for the SP too.

 

[electracity]

Impressed with glass tiles from a cosmetic stand point.

2 concerns I have not see addressed:

-How are all those tiles electrically connected together? Could be both a reliability concern and/or a lot of labor to connect.

-Small individual tiles could be more labor intensive that typical shingle roof. Has any one recently watched how quickly roofers install a shingle roof with nail guns. Most can do more than 1 square (100 sq ft) in an hour even with a complex roof. On an easy roof they can do even way more. (I have an uncle in this business and he estimates the labor at 10 square/8 hour day and will almost always do better than this.)

Cannot find any details on the interconnections and roof attachment.

Were the houses at the announcement actually solar functional?

TE roofs are comparable to clay tile and slate, not asphalt roofing. This solar roofing is a higher end product for higher end homes.

It also appears not ready for prime time. No wiring info, no talk of non-solar "blank" pieces. No talk of the power optimizers this sort of product will require. No explanation of what will go on north facing roof sections. No talk of whether this roof can be walked on. No talk of code requirements, etc etc etc

There is a market for this expensive product when it is actually a product. Perhaps the big benefit will be long term as this product evolves into a medium priced product.

 

[Mario Kadastik]

Elon did say you can walk on it. Check his twitter feed with replies, someone asked if he could walk on this roof and Elon replied yes. Also mentioned heating wires can be incorporated like car back window heaters and would still be net positive and keep snow off the roof in winter. Also confirmed it works in all climates and is extremely durable, probably longer than the house.

 

[vgrinshpun]

For the negative spin on this, Dana Hull in Bloomberg quotes a solar consultant who apparently doesn't understand the economics of TE:

Paula Mints, chief market research analyst at SPV Market Research, questions the economics of the new offering, which can be combined with a home battery.​

“Tesla announced a solar tile -- not new -- with battery that is priced below cost,” said Mints in an e-mail. “Basically Tesla announced another way to lose money.”​

Elon Musk Reveals Solar Roof Made of Glass Tiles in L.A.

Too bad Ms. Hull couldn't be bothered to find someone who actually knew what they were talking about when it came to Tesla's TE costs.

Well that e-mail is missing few details. One of them that battery is priced below competitors cost, which is of course not new - they are doing it for more than a decade in automotive space (although if one believes that Tesla loosing money on each car, the phantasy remains intact, undisturbed) Basically Tesla announced another way to loose competitor's money.

I actually encountered the same attitude personally, when approaching an engineer from a top tier global company producing variety of electrical products doing presentation with a question about Tesla's battery storage products. The presentation was dedicated to BES and the engineer was responsible for putting systems together, using his company's inverters, transformers, panels, switchgear, etc. and batteries from the third parties. As a result they were buying batteries from all major players and clearly were very familiar with the pricing. The engineer told me that Tesla is selling their batteries below cost...

 

[JRP3]

Elon did say you can walk on it. Check his twitter feed with replies, someone asked if he could walk on this roof and Elon replied yes.

They also showed a video of a weight being dropped on it and the panel surviving, unlike the other conventional examples. For someone to suggest "No talk of whether this roof can be walked on" is misleading at best, and the willful spread of misinformation at worst.

 

[dennis]

Yeh maybe in the future when battery and solar drops to the cost of about 10%-20% as of today. But anyway, I'm not saying Powerwall+Solar Roof is dumb, just reminding people the cost for going 100% off-grid is stupidly high compared to drawing from the grid every now and then. Haven't done any calculations yet, but I think 2 Powerwall + Solar Roof might have you covered for 80% of your total need, but you would need 5 times larger or more to go 100%.

I've had solar for about 10 years. Gross 21kWh array that was installed when cost was $8/watt. System has paid for itself and my annual bill is now <$500 including charging for my Model S and Fiat 500e. That's a 97% reduction from what I was paying PG&E 10 years ago plus I was spending a lot of money on gasoline. Net metering and the non-tiered EV rate was the secret.

Living in earthquake country I've been interested in battery backup for a disaster scenario. We installed circuit monitoring so I have really good historical records for usage and generation. While I haven't done a detailed analysis it looks like a couple of powerwalls would be enough to back up the solar power for the key circuits in the house if there was a long term outage even if it was during a rainy spell in January. However going off grid is an entirely different situation.

In my worst day this year, which was a rainy day in January, I had a 65 kWh generation vs. usage deficit. But that is not the real problem. It is that every day in December and January my panels produce less energy than I use and the cumulative deficit for those months in 4100 kWh! Clearly my solar array, which is large enough to take my bill almost to zero because of net metering would have to double or triple in size to produce enough power in December and January to charge the batteries so they can power everything when the sun is not shining.

I know my situation is not typical because I have a large house and the net metering rates with the EV schedule are particularly favorable in PG&E territory. But my conclusion is that to go off grid you not only need the batteries, you have to size your solar power generation for a string of worst case days during the minimum power generation period of December and January instead of being able to rely on the grid to be your big battery.

 

[EinSV]

Well that e-mail is missing few details. One of them that battery is priced below competitors cost, which is of course not new - they are doing it for more than a decade in automotive space (although if one believes that Tesla loosing money on each car, the phantasy remains intact, undisturbed) Basically Tesla announced another way to loose competitor's money.

I actually encountered the same attitude personally, when approaching an engineer from a top tier global company producing variety of electrical products doing presentation with a question about Tesla's battery storage products. The presentation was dedicated to BES and the engineer was responsible for putting systems together, using his company's inverters, transformers, panels, switchgear, etc. and batteries from the third parties. As a result they were buying batteries from all major players and clearly were very familiar with the pricing. The engineer told me that Tesla is selling their batteries below cost...

Will be interesting to see whether Tesla will reveal anything about TE projected margins on Tuesday. They have been playing things close to the vest (for good reason I believe) -- we'll see if that continues.

 

[racer26]

They're saying mid-2017 for when you can install one of these roofs. If that's like a typical deadline in one of Elon's companies, we should be seeing them sometime in 2018. That being said, it isn't a terribly complex product to manufacture so maybe they'll be on time. Who knows. I expect model 3 will be on time.

How can people be suggesting it's an expensive product until we've seen sample pricing? Elon says it will be cost competitive with a traditional roof and buying power from the power company. Elon rarely makes statements like that unless they're true. If this one is true, it's not expensive, it's just a different way of thinking about the cost of a roof, but if it's cheaper, then it's dumb not to buy this roof.

US (really, North American) households use much more electricity than the average in the rest of the world. We also have the benefit of access to some of the cheapest utility power in the world. For places where utility power is more expensive, or cost prohibitive, or unavailable, an off grid TE system will make much more sense.

I agree that for many parts of the world with low reliability and/or high cost utility power, solar will leapfrog in much the same way that cell phones did.

Using powerwalls as a sort of grid balancing TN is kind of a cool idea, but I doubt we'll be seeing that.

 

[Vitold]

Are these new roofs to be manufactured at the NY Solar City plant? How much of the CapX for the line is already spent? When will these roofs be available for installation? Maybe we'll find out on Monday.

I bet it's the glass factory in Peru that will be producing the glass...

 

[Novice]

Will be interesting to see whether Tesla will reveal anything about TE projected margins on Tuesday. They have been playing things close to the vest (for good reason I believe) -- we'll see if that continues.

Why do you think is their motive in keeping positive news so secretive ? It would have prevented more FUD and damage done to the SP if released earlier as a fresh catalyst.

 

[pGo]

For comparison purposes, I had a 9 kW solar system (32 @ 280W LG panels with enphase micro inverters) put in last year and paid $28k installed.

If possible, can you provide further breakdown if any.. specially state or other incentives or rebates.. I tried looking for a system in the past year in FL and the price is nowhere near what you are paying. Thanks

 

[SunCatcher]

There was no mention in the presentation as to whether these solar roofs were operational or not. I think it could have really helped if Elon was able to say (as he did with last year's Power Wall reveal; I loved that moment) that these homes' roofs were now actually producing electricity, and the lights from within were powered by that day's solar production. Maybe that was a given, but it didn't seem obvious to me. It seemed a little too staged. Are they still actually not quite there yet?

When we all start seeing these solar roof installations going up on actual customers' homes, I think it will become real. When we see the installers laying them down on the roof, and connecting them up, and the power flowing, heads will be turning. I hope that event is indeed very very soon. I want so badly for this all (cars, batteries, solar roofs) to reach full fruition. It seems that we are so close.

 

[kenliles]

For long-term investors wanting to 'trade' on the arbitrage of market miscalculation of Tesla
[including those marketers who never saw SCTY as part of Tesla from the beginning]

The most important part of yesterday's presentation would be:
Elon Musk:
"[People think of Tesla as an electric car company…but]"
“The WHOLE purpose of Tesla was to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy”

Tesla 2.0
and so it begins...

Apologize for the obscure reference to my previous post in the long-term thread:
but I’ll have to change my Musk-World first Principle in that post from:
'Tesla exists to fulfill one man’s vision []- which was never about ‘making cars’ []- it was and is solely about the cheapest possible sustainable energy for humanity'
to
'Tesla exists to fulfill one man’s vision []- which was never about ‘making cars’ []- it was and is solely about the cheapest possible sustainable energy for humanity'

and so the story continues… at the Cadence of Elon
The ViaLight Grid
Power of Humanity transformed from Service to Product

Congrats To my fellow Outré-Longs:
It's a privilege to invest and bear witness to
The Photosynthesis of Mankind
'The Light We Take is Equal to the Light We Make'
WE are Groot

 

[SW2Fiddler]

Why do you think is their motive in keeping positive news so secretive ? It would have prevented more FUD and damage done to the SP if released earlier as a fresh catalyst.

Why would you pull back on a rubber band before releasing it to fly across the room?
Why would you spend longer fueling before a long trip, instead of leaving sooner with the tank half full?
Why can't it be high tide all the time?

 

[electracity]

Elon did say you can walk on it. Check his twitter feed with replies, someone asked if he could walk on this roof and Elon replied yes. Also mentioned heating wires can be incorporated like car back window heaters and would still be net positive and keep snow off the roof in winter. Also confirmed it works in all climates and is extremely durable, probably longer than the house.

Thanks. But I'm still doubtful that a glass-like surface can be safely walked on except on a low pitch roof.

Without explaining interconnects and power optimizers, this wasn't a product announcement but an aspiration. Without the solarcity purchase we would not have heard about this product now. The devil is in the details, which are apparently "undecided".

The new powerwall looks great, and is probably an actual product. The AC powerwall is highly significant as a sellable product to all existing solar users.