1) I find sleepyhead's numbers for outright purchases to be very optimistic. He is very savvy with this stuff, so he can find best possible deal(s) out there. But an average person may not come anywhere close to sleepy's numbers.
2) (no offense but) except for a few solar geeks, nobody knows what $/W means. Let alone comparing different quotes based on this.
An average consumer at best, if at all, knows Cents/kWh.
SolarCity competes with utilities on that metric. When SolarCity goes out and says: "lets pull up your electricity bill, this is the rate you are paying, we can reduce this by x%. meanwhile you will be reducing pollution and contributing to the planets well being." its very appealing to most people.
As much as people here would like, the comparison of $/W is highly irrelavent, which no body really knows or understands.
3) Lets says sleepyhead turns out right and the lease model entirely dies away, that doesn't in any way mean death to SolarCity. They started out by selling systems outright and by many accounts they still do.
Musk said they will produce and install in the order of "tens of gigawatts per year". At that scale, starting from now, the potential growth is so much, the exact mechanics of the sales: lease vs cash-sales vs financed-sales is largely irrelevant.
It so happens that leasing produces the best longterm shareholder value AND currently, consumers are appreciating this model. Thus, it makes complete sense for solarcity to focus on this model. If it doesn't work over time, they can very easily adapt to a different model.
4) Solarcity has become the most vertically integrated player out there and becoming more so every passing quarter. The economies of scale + execution efficiency will, in time, make this company very valuable. I have no doubts about that.
In closing I want to say this:
I have been reading this thread for a long time. No one, I mean absolutely no one, predicted that solarcity will get into panel manufacturing. But solarcity did it and very clearly explained why they are doing it. The management sees far ahead of anyone here and they are ever focussed on growing the company at a phenomenal rate for decades to come. They see obstacles, they will come up with ever more profitable solutions. I trust Musk's vision and Rive brothers' execution.
I have a large position in solar city (together with Tesla). None of the bear arguments here have swayed me a single bit.. (they did make me research and think a lot though).
- - - Updated - - -
Finally, the thing about leasing companies eating away tax benefits meant for the end consumer. Well, we can argue the same about rental homes, can't we? Homeowners get to take mortgage interest tax deduction, which the end consumer would have enjoyed if they bought a home instead of renting one.
Is renting out homes un-ethical?
2) (no offense but) except for a few solar geeks, nobody knows what $/W means. Let alone comparing different quotes based on this.
An average consumer at best, if at all, knows Cents/kWh.
SolarCity competes with utilities on that metric. When SolarCity goes out and says: "lets pull up your electricity bill, this is the rate you are paying, we can reduce this by x%. meanwhile you will be reducing pollution and contributing to the planets well being." its very appealing to most people.
As much as people here would like, the comparison of $/W is highly irrelavent, which no body really knows or understands.
3) Lets says sleepyhead turns out right and the lease model entirely dies away, that doesn't in any way mean death to SolarCity. They started out by selling systems outright and by many accounts they still do.
Musk said they will produce and install in the order of "tens of gigawatts per year". At that scale, starting from now, the potential growth is so much, the exact mechanics of the sales: lease vs cash-sales vs financed-sales is largely irrelevant.
It so happens that leasing produces the best longterm shareholder value AND currently, consumers are appreciating this model. Thus, it makes complete sense for solarcity to focus on this model. If it doesn't work over time, they can very easily adapt to a different model.
4) Solarcity has become the most vertically integrated player out there and becoming more so every passing quarter. The economies of scale + execution efficiency will, in time, make this company very valuable. I have no doubts about that.
In closing I want to say this:
I have been reading this thread for a long time. No one, I mean absolutely no one, predicted that solarcity will get into panel manufacturing. But solarcity did it and very clearly explained why they are doing it. The management sees far ahead of anyone here and they are ever focussed on growing the company at a phenomenal rate for decades to come. They see obstacles, they will come up with ever more profitable solutions. I trust Musk's vision and Rive brothers' execution.
I have a large position in solar city (together with Tesla). None of the bear arguments here have swayed me a single bit.. (they did make me research and think a lot though).
- - - Updated - - -
Finally, the thing about leasing companies eating away tax benefits meant for the end consumer. Well, we can argue the same about rental homes, can't we? Homeowners get to take mortgage interest tax deduction, which the end consumer would have enjoyed if they bought a home instead of renting one.
Is renting out homes un-ethical?
Last edited:
