Tesla's Solar Factory Is Exporting Most of Its Cells (reuters.com) 210
Most of the solar cells Tesla is producing at its Gigafactory in upstate New York "are being sold overseas instead of being used in the company's trademark 'Solar Roof' as originally intended," reports Reuters. "The exporting underscores the depth of Tesla's troubles in the U.S. solar business, which the electric car maker entered in 2016 with its controversial $2.6 billion purchase of SolarCity." From the report: Tesla has only sporadically purchased solar cells produced by its partner in the factory, Panasonic Corp, according to a Buffalo solar factory employee speaking on condition of anonymity. The rest are going largely to foreign buyers, according to a Panasonic letter to U.S. Customs officials reviewed by Reuters. When the two firms announced the partnership in 2016, the companies said they would collaborate on cell and module production and Tesla would make a long-term commitment to buy the cells from Panasonic. Cells are components that convert the sun's light into electricity; they are combined to make solar panels.
The situation raises new questions about the viability of cash-strapped Tesla's solar business. Musk once called the deal a "no brainer" - but some investors panned it as a bailout of an affiliated firm at the expense of Tesla shareholders. Before the merger, Musk had served as chairman of SolarCity's board of directors, and his cousin, Lyndon Rive, was the company's CEO. [...] Panasonic also produces traditional solar panels at the Buffalo plant for Tesla, but has been selling many of them to other buyers since at least last year due to low demand from the California car company, Reuters reported in August 2018. Tesla last month reported a 36 percent slide in its overall solar sales in the first quarter, adding to previous big drops since the SolarCity acquisition.
The situation raises new questions about the viability of cash-strapped Tesla's solar business. Musk once called the deal a "no brainer" - but some investors panned it as a bailout of an affiliated firm at the expense of Tesla shareholders. Before the merger, Musk had served as chairman of SolarCity's board of directors, and his cousin, Lyndon Rive, was the company's CEO. [...] Panasonic also produces traditional solar panels at the Buffalo plant for Tesla, but has been selling many of them to other buyers since at least last year due to low demand from the California car company, Reuters reported in August 2018. Tesla last month reported a 36 percent slide in its overall solar sales in the first quarter, adding to previous big drops since the SolarCity acquisition.
Dumspter Fire (Score:2)
https://www.technologyreview.c... [technologyreview.com]
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Given how well Tesla products explode, I wouldn’t want anything built by them on the roof of my house [ibtimes.com].
Re:Dumspter Fire (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to link exploding cars to rooftop solar cells is a bit of a stretch, even for an AC.
The quality of FUD these days is depressingly low.
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They are only linked by their incompetent engineering, substandard build quality, and conman CEO.
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The quality of FUD these days is depressingly low.
I dunno, I think we're getting some of the highest quality FUD ever these days!
That and/or people are getting dumber and more gullible. (They get their "news" from Facebook and believe it.)
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Solar City is a dumpster fire. Solar Roofs are the only hope they had and that isn't going so well; https://www.technologyreview.c... [technologyreview.com]
In the US perhaps where the national leadership thinks oil and coal is the future and tries to kill the competition with artificial trade barriers. Across the pond in Europe solar roofs and battery walls are doing just fine.
Re: Dumspter Fire (Score:1)
Hey freischutz, did you know Germany is 40% coal?
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The person you're replying to may have been a bit dishonest in his rounding, but 22.5% of Germany's energy mix being lignite 12.9% and another regular coal is considerably worse than having 40% of their energy mix be regular quality coal. Not only that, to avoid permanent environmental damage a phase-out by 2038 is just way too slow.
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Re:Dumspter Fire (Score:4, Insightful)
Can I have a cheap coal plant, NO. I can have a tax free solar power and battery plant though, hmm, the choices. Tesla simply is marketing poorly in the solar power market place and is not properly marketing set recognisable power systems, that the public can recognise and appreciate as a capital investment. Also they have not set up a business to buy excess solar electricity and as a group bargain better prices for that energy output.
Also it is quite slow in the energy park market. Think of an energy park as a combined electric car carpark and battery station, every second level of the multi-storey carpark being a battery array. The sound business method in there, buy off peak energy at night and store it and the sell it during the day at peak energy prices to the electric cars parked in the building and as back up energy to surrounding structures. Would it make money today, absolutely, just needs to be invested in, double income energy parks right in major metropolitan centres and not out in the country and they can sell nothing, back up energy in an emergency for surrounding commercials entities who need that guarantee (when there is no power failure, they get money for nothing).
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Also they have not set up a business to buy excess solar electricity and as a group bargain better prices for that energy output.
For that USA lags regulations and technology - aka grid infrastructure - you can not simply set up a virtual power plant like that in a country that has an energy grid below any third world country.
Would it make money today, absolutely
Indeed it would.
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California is not the USA.
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At twice the cost for power, and with significant dependency on coal as well...
The cost of power is the same. The difference is you pay for it in taxes (subsidies), reliability (power outages are not common in the first world yet parts of the USA are proposing rolling outages), and ultimately you will pay for it through your medical insurance too.
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False. Just the power in Germany [cleanenergywire.org] costs $0.07. Between the acquisition cost (the cost of generation) and transmission (grid cost) you're over $0.16 already - pre taxes, subsidies, everything. You are already pushing doubling of the entire final consumer cost [chooseenergy.com] for electricity in many States. Power in Germany is incredibly expensive. It's about on-par with Hawaii, which gets 60 to 80% of its electricity [hawaiianelectric.com] from oil, about the most expensive source you can have (but attractive to islands, because it is so ener
Re: Dumspter Fire (Score:5, Informative)
They were selling a lot of panels to China? Really?
Yes, so it would seem:
A polysilicon factory in Moses Lake, Washington, is in danger of closing because of the nation's on-going trade dispute with China. REC Silicon says it plans to close down production at its plant on Wednesday, and the remaining 150 employees will be laid off at the end of June. The Columbia Basin Herald reports that REC is struggling because of China's 57% tariff on U.S.-made polysilicon.
Trump slapped tariffs on the Chinese to save an unprofitable steel and aluminium sector in the US operating obsolete factories, and the Chinese struck back by strangling a US high tech industry trying to gain a foothold in an emerging, and highly profitable, energy technology market:
https://www.usnews.com/news/be... [usnews.com]
Quite clever really, in a Machiavellian kind of way. Your opponent is a dumbass being advised by a bunch of conspiracy theory mongering dumbasses that oil and coal are the future, why interrupt them while they are making a mistake?
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There are a few manufacturers besides Solar City offering solar roof tiles. They are an attractive proposition, especially on the roofs of our typical Dutch homes: a relatively small area broken by dormers means that often you won't be able to fit many traditional panels. With solar tiles, you can fill the en
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The panels are the most reliable part of the system. It's the inverters, charger and batteries you'll have to replace over and over again. Tesla's system is terribly inefficient and expensive.
[citation needed]
I don't know about that conclusion, but the rest of the post is spot on. Panels ARE the most reliable part of the system. Batteries DO have to be replaced again and again. And most inverters are built like shit, and they fry themselves eventually, due to inadequate design. Google around for pics of failed AIMS inverters, they straight up used an inadequate wire gauge behind the terminals and it burns out. They were a trusted brand until recently.
Battery chargers, on the other hand, I've found to be very rel
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Really, the solar roof and battery wall are doing just fine in Europe? You guys musn't be very bright then. I'm in the US and installing solar right now. I looked at the solar roof. For about 2 seconds. The system using traditional panels I'm getting installed is going to cost me 12K after rebates. The solar roof was going to cost 55K+ after rebates, possibly as much as 80K. I did put a new roof on before the panels go up which did cost an additional 8K, but that's still a hell of a lot short of 55K. If you guys are actually buying solar roofs, I've got some bridges to sell you in the London area.
I was talking about bolting solar panels to your roof in any form, panels, tiles. All the way from Skagen in Denmark to the Alps you drive through towns and villages where half the houses have these things on the roof. Farmers have build storage houses, barns and cattle housing designed and orientated from the ground up for solar panels. Half the high rise buildings in most German cities have their roofs covered with some form of these panels and solar roof tiles are gaining ground as well since we don't ha
Solar cells convert the sun light into electricity (Score:3)
It's for razor sharp technical analysis such as the above that keeps me coming back here. There are tons of such negative articles out there, makes you wonder just what exactly Elon Musk did to so piss Wall Street?
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Or, perhaps. they are just reporting what is happening, without a sinister motive or dark conspiracy?
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Or perhaps Elon Musk didn't co-operate while Wall Street continually shorted his company, which is why they set the SEC on him. This is how it went down, buy a short position in the company, then trash-talk it in the press, wait for the stock to drop and then cash-out, then rinse and repeat. Explains the yo-yoing of the stock price despite a good sales history. Who would have thought the investors wo
Tesla Has All Sorts of Trouble (Score:2, Interesting)
They had a disasterous Q1, and continue to lose money hand-over-fist [battleswarmblog.com]. SolarCity was an obvious conflict-of-interest move that benefited Musk personally because he was losing his pants on the company. Q4 2018 was the first time Tesla had back-to-back profitable quarters.
The SolarCity acquisition is just another bad decision in a long string of bad decisions.
(Now here come the Tesla fanboys to accuse me of shorting the stock/being an oil company shill in 3...2...1...)
Re: Apart from Teslas (Score:2)
Funny, when I read your post it all came out as *640k ought to be enough for everyone* over and over.
The thought there is a fixed market fir electric cars, to be the same forever... well.
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Incorrect on a couple of points.
Tesla sold about 30K vehicles in 2019Q1.
There were 9,8K more all electric from other brands.
Plug in hybrids sold 21.5K.
So hybrids were 2/3s of Tesla sales #s, so "orders of magnitude" not so much. Selling 3X more electric cars than all other combined is a bit of magnitude.
https://www.extremetech.com/ex... [extremetech.com]
And Tesla is about 15% of the luxury car market:
https://cleantechnica.com/2019... [cleantechnica.com]
Yeah, they are having growing pains, but Tesla is way ahead on the tech side (by years).
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No they aren't. You are clueless. BYD is way ahead of Tesla in sales. You Tesla fanboys are ignorant of the rest of the planet. Oh and by the way, Toyota makes 30k cars in 3 days if you want to compare Tesla sales. I know you tech bros think everyone is going to buy a Tesla, but it ain't happening and ain't going to happen.
Availability? (Score:5, Insightful)
We cannot buy SolarCity products here. If we could, it would probably catch on pretty quick. I know in my neighborhood, we have agreed to buy 24 of their systems (for 24 rooftops) when they finally become available. Though, we want the Spanish tile version we saw earlier.
If Tesla is waiting for the US market to happen... they probably are screwed. Americans want coal and gas power. They even clap when Trump makes windmill sounds.
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Why don't you buy solar roof tiles from a different company instead of waiting? There are several similar products on the market.
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Are there? Rooftop solar is common. Solar "roof tiles" I've never seen from anyone other than Tesla.
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Gaia Solar
Solecco Solar
Certainteed (for six years!)
Luma Solar
Suntegravv
RGS
There are lots of options.
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Those are solar shingles, not solar tiles like Tesla is trying to sell. These look like asphalt shingles and are ugly. In most cases they only replace part of the existing asphalt shingles which makes the roof have a dark square in the middle of it which is even worse than having solar panels installed (at least for me).
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Actually no.
The competitors call them "shingles" but they are only simplified solar panels: https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
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If Tesla is waiting for the US market to happen... they probably are screwed. Americans want coal and gas power. They even clap when Trump makes windmill sounds.
You obviously don't know many Americans. Only a small minority think he's doing a good job or would applaud his windmill impressions. Most people here would never go to a Trump rally. Essentially everyone here thinks that coal is stupid with the exception of those communities in the traditional coal producing regions.
Personally, I would love to buy a solar roof when mine needs to be replaced as long as it is somewhat cost competitive. It's the cost competitive aspect that is difficult as a I live in an area
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I think you don't your country much. Figures...
https://projects.fivethirtyeig... [fivethirtyeight.com]
Trump is unpopular by a very very small margin. To check the reality, compare his rating with Ford's.
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Re:Availability? (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you need to appreciate that most europeans would consider your average american roof only fit for a shed. That is our houses have roof's that are designed to last many decades. My house has a slate roof. It is already over 70 years old, and I expect it to last at least another 70 (aka long after I am dead and buried). Consequently the price premium is perceived to be much lower in Europe when you are doing a roof replacement.
Then you have to consider the aesthetics. Put simply a roof and panels look really ugly, and in many places would not be allowed. A Tesla solar roof just looks like an ordinary roof and should be no issue in a conservation area. Hell you might even be in with a shot of putting one on a listed building.
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Aren't they also a major producer and consumer of clean energy ?
Complaining about exports? (Score:5, Insightful)
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No. Complaining about energy policies. Stop trying to Fox and Friends the entire situation.
Don't produce electricity locally (Score:2)
Re: Buffalo is not in upstate NY (Score:1)
Nobody cares.
You're also the only state who thinks anyone else knows or cares what a borough is.
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Buffalo is western NY you retarded faggots.
I thought "upstate"referred to all of NY state except for its share of the greater NY City urban area.
(Not that I'd know, as I'm a northwest territories native temporarily transplanted to the left coast.)
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Speaking as one who lived for many years on the shores of Lake Ontario, you are correct: "upstate" New York is pretty much all of New York State except for greater NYC. For the purposes of this geographic taxonomy, and much to their chagrin, all of Long Island is lumped in with NYC.
To be more specific, you could look at a map of counties [wikipedia.org] and say "anything north and west of Rockland and Westchester cou
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I thought "upstate"referred to all of NY state except for its share of the greater NY City urban area.
There are fierce battles for the term. People in NYC think "upstate" means Westchester and beyond.
People in the Adirondacks think anything north of Albany and west of the Hudson qualifies. People in Albany think they're definitely "upstate".
Everybody agrees that it's definitely not NYC or Long Island.
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Calling Buffalo "upstate" NY is a bad habit NYCers have. Of course, to them, anything outside Los Angeles is "upstate" NY.
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You seem to say "retarded faggot" a lot.
What about them makes them capture your imagination so much?
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Re:Americans don't want solar... (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA. The cells are made in America, exported, assembled into panels, and then imported back into America.
There is nothing that indicates a lack of demand for solar in America.
It is a complicated scheme to avoid Trump's tariffs on solar. The tariffs don't apply to panels that use American cells.
Re:Americans don't want solar... (Score:4, Insightful)
I read the article and ShanghaiBill is correct. Exporting US cells to China to for assembly and packaging is just standard market adjustments to avoid costs using whatever legal means are available. Trump's tariffs are essentially a sales tax on US purchasers of Chinese-manufactured goods. For manufacturers sourcing parts for consumer goods from China their costs increase, and they will pass those costs on to their consumers. The finished goods consumer ends up getting screwed TWICE. They pay a hidden tax on those goods, and typically pay more than just their share of the tariff.
Here's why: The manufacturer's gross profit margin is typically a percentage of total cost of production...Apple, for example, reaps a gross margin of 64 percent on its iPhone X. When the cost of production goes up, the consumer gets hit with both a share of the tariff *and* the incremental increase in cost due to the margin being based on a higher production cost. So if the manufacturer maintains a 64 percent margin, the consumer can expect to pay their share of the tariff fees plus 64% more to cover the manufacturer's gross profit margin.
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TFA says there is low demand for their products in the US. It doesn't make sense to export and import panels to avoid tariffs, because there are no tariffs on domestically manufactured panels.
Musk seems to have over-estimated the speed at which technology would get cheaper, both for solar and batteries. Panasonic is fairly conservative and will prioritize maintaining quality over getting cost down fast. Sensible really - if they had a quality issue and were faced with replacing a large number of battery pac
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If you want quality panels, Canadian ones are already cost-comparable with Chinese panels, even without an additional tariff. Flooded batteries are made here in the USA, but LiFePo4s and Li-Ions are mostly made in China, as are most AGMs. So it really depends on what kind of system you're building whether this affects you or not. For a home system, probably not. For a mobile system, probably. There's only one decent and cheap LiFePo4, and it comes from China. Unless you're buying broken down Tesla or Leaf p
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Aren't Panasonic 18650's made in Japan?
I wanted to buy from them (Score:2)
A couple years ago I tried to buy my solar panels from them. Got a guy out for the initial consultation; he took one look at my roof and said "Oh, that's a metal roof, we can't install on that". Next call (SunPower), no such problem.
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Musk seems to have over-estimated the speed at which technology would get cheaper, both for solar and batteries
This would make Musk the first optimist in history of solar power. [twimg.com]
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The cells are made here, but assembled out of country because the labor is cheaper. They are then re-imported back to the US, causing the assembled units to be subject to tariffs that are still cheaper than having US labor produce the finished goods.
If Musk would put an assembly plant in a cheaper labor market in the US, it would still take several decades for the cost to become competitive compared to what it is to have them assembled elsewhere. Building the necessary plants isn't cheap unless you're a for
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Assembly into panels costs more than the cells. The cells themselves are fragile. Most of the product is to protect the cells; a glass or plastic sheet in the front with UV protection, a frame, some sort of air and water tight encapsulation on the back, plus spot welding the cells together with something, adding some protection diodes, etc.
So most of the value in the product is being imported. By using non-imported cells, they avoid the tax on most of the product.
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Will the energy company allow solar to get cash payments? Give "cash" cash back for energy? Give energy company "credit"?
A new roof? Permits. How many inspections? Approval?
Will the energy company "accept" the energy exported when all that is done? The electricity meters have to be smart meters?
How much control will the power company have?
Pay for a battery now? Have to accept a battery? Cost of solar now with later battery support?
New roof? New meter? New tra
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I talked to a woman with a big solar installation on her roof (not Tesla) and the long term cost is pretty high. The payoff/free energy point is like 12-15 years out.
She could have put the up front cost into a S&P index fund and her energy costs would have been 25% less than solar.
I like the energy independence/survivalist fantasy of a house that is self-powering and ideally grid-disconnected, but the economics in this part of the country don't work at all.
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Putting the upfront cost into an index fond means she has the money.
Installing roof top solar means she can borrow the money.
No idea why americans are always proclaiming they are so super smart on money when they actually are not.
Friends asked me why I bought a Diesel, after all in Germany it has (had?) a high base tax and it costs upfront about $2000 more than the equivalent gasoline car.
Easy: when I go to vacation and use my car I drive about 3000km - 5000km during vacations. It makes vacations so much ch
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Her solar install had an upfront down payment.
Borrowing the money for those upfront costs doesn't make the project cheaper, it only makes it more expensive because of the cost of the borrowing.
Target corporations first (Score:2)
I talked to a woman with a big solar installation on her roof (not Tesla) and the long term cost is pretty high. The payoff/free energy point is like 12-15 years out.
Because of the long term payoff I've always been mildly surprised that solar hasn't gained more traction with corporations, particularly ones like grocery stores where solar power matches nicely with their need for power draw (refrigeration and AC) during peak sunlight hours. If a company puts in a grocery store or big box retail, they typically are expecting it to be there for a while and they have a BIG roof to work with that is otherwise a wasted asset. Unless they really aren't thinking long term (and
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They hope it will be there for a while, but they have a budget for building the store, and they can't just spend more on the solar. That upfront money w
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I wonder: when was it installed? It is was more than a few years, that would be significant. At the rate that solar power is dropping in price (5-10% per year, depending on whose numbers you use), one would expect a commensurate reduction in the breakeven time.
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I'd say no less than 3 years ago, no more than 6 years ago,
I mean, we had a detailed one-time conversation and she was pretty frank with her dollar costs and I just plugged those numbers into Excel with some back-of-the-envelope kind of numbers of other uses of her up front money.
The big variable that's hard to account for is the cost of electricity, I just incremented with average inflation figures. Well, I suppose stock market returns, too, but over 10-15 years, I figured reasonable returns on the low en
109% in the market, if you want to compare that wa (Score:5, Funny)
> 12-15 year payout? Thaâ(TM)ts better than a 5% stock market return
Lol. No.
Put money into solar cells and you hope to get that same money back in 15-25 years.
Put money into the market (an index fund) and you can get that money back TOMORROW.
On average, money invested in stocks will double about every seven years. So in 14 years you'll have four times as much as you started with. With solar in 14 years you're hoping you haven't lost money.
Re:109% in the market, if you want to compare that (Score:4, Insightful)
On average, money invested in stocks will double about every seven years.
Except, of course, when it doesn't. Sometimes you might have to wait longer than 15-25 years.
One time, if you bought ONLY in 1930 (Score:2)
It's generally suggested that you consistently invest over time, not just make one large purchase one time.
If you look at a SINGLE purchase of stock, rather consistently investing, if you bought in 1930 and not before or after, it would have taken 25 years to double your money. That's happened ONE time in US history. If you had been consistently investing, say starting in 1915, you wouldn't have done too bad even with the great depression.
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Inflation adjusted Dow Jones [macrotrends.net] has gone from about $2,500 to about $25,000 in the last 100 years. That's doubling about every 30 years, not every 7 to 12 years..
That's the cost, not the return. 100yr DJIA 10.01% (Score:3)
> Inflation adjusted Dow Jones has gone from about $2,500 to about $25,000 in the last 100 years.
Okay May 2019 it was $1,600. I love how you just randomly change the numbers by 50%. :)
But more importantly, you looked at the cost, and completely ignored profits. That industrial giants that make up the DJIA aren't high-growth startups which makes returning by growing, they are established companies which make profit, which are paid out as dividends. Looking at the *cost* of the stock as you did complete
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On average, money invested in stocks will double about every seven years. ... so no.
That implies an average interest of 10%
If that was the case: everyone would do it.
And if everyone would do it, you had no such gains ... idiot.
Um - Google it? (Score:2)
Take your pick of source, or calculate it yourself in Excel:
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
That doesn't even include the employer match you get in your 401K, which may double your money immediately.
> If that was the case: everyone would do it.
Pretty everyone who has been educated and has some self-discipline does "do it", because it's a really friggin good idea. (Some people never eat vegetables, some people smoke, some people blow the entire paycheck immediately). Unless of course they are instead d
Expense ratio. DYAC 0.1% is good (Score:2)
That should be "expense ratio". Stupid autocorrect.
That's how much it costs to have someone managing the money, keeping it in solid, reliable companies that have done well for a long time and seem like they'll continue to do well. That also covers things like printing and mailing your statements and tax form.
0.1% is a good expense ratio. 0.2% is okay, not great.
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Put money into solar cells and you hope to get that same money back in 15-25 years.
No hoping required. Get panels with a standard 25 year warranty, payback is pessimistically 10 years, and profit is guaranteed.
Put money into the market (an index fund) and you can get that money back TOMORROW.
Unless the market goes down tomorrow. While it's true that in the long run the market always goes up, that's only true over a timespan of decades and if you need that cash in 5-10 years you might be screwed.
You can't really compare the two because one is a nearly risk free ethical investment and the other is the stock market.
Hail. Defective panels. Moving to a new house (Score:2)
> No hoping required. Get panels with a standard 25 year warranty, payback is pessimistically 10 years, and profit is guaranteed.
Solar panels are mostly "made in China". Which is a guarantee of quality, right?
Defective panels are a significant problem in the industry, with defect rates around 12%. Major manufacturers have sold panels that start failing after about two years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/0... [nytimes.com]
There's also something called hail.
Even more likely, you'll want to move, because you got a new j
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Obviously, for this to work you have to not be a fucking moron. I forgot to mention that.
First, buy some decent solar panels. LG are good and reasonably priced, for example. IKEA do a good warranty.
Then, guy some home insurance so that if hail or a falling tree damages them, you the insurance pays out.
Finally, avoid getting fucked over to the tune of $40,000 when you can pay about 1/5th that much for a decent system (installed).
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> IKEA do a good warranty.
> Then, guy some home insurance so that if hail or a falling tree damages them, you the insurance pays out.
Ikea estimates if you spend $8,800 on their panel + battery system (installation not included), you'll save about $733. That's according to Ikea.
Agreed, certainly you should have insurance. Of course, average home insurance cost is 1% of the value. So if you increase the value of your home by perhaps $7,000, your insurance cost increases by about $70 / year. That just t
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Panel AND battery. And IKEA does a 25 year warranty. So even if you go for the battery as well (not the cheapest option) it's a sure thing that you will come out on top.
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Though you also get a roof.
I'll be interested in this if I build a house or have to put a new roof. I wouldn't throw away a perfectly good roof in order to install solar tiles.
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10.1% averaged over the last hundred years (Score:2)
Both the S&P 500 and the Dow have averaged 10%, both in the last few decades and in the last hundred years.
Another person replying trying to say that's not right decided to look at the price (oops) of the Dow over the last hundred years. That's the index and time period chosen to "refute" the ten 10% average. Turns out, over the last 100 years the Dow has returned 10.1% average.
https://dqydj.com/dow-jones-re... [dqydj.com]
(Don't forget check the box to reinvest dividends, of course).
Inflation averages 2%-3%. Fortu
everyone consistently in index funds, yes (Score:2)
Yeah, about 9% return is the average, so most people invest an index fund (100 or so solid companies), in order to get that average return. Over 95% of millionaires became millionaires in exactly that way. That's kinda how building wealth works.
Investing like this should not be confused with speculation, picking one money-losing company like Tesla and betting that they'll be bigger than Toyota and GM combined any day now. That's speculation, not investment.
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And refused to accept that you had, that you were WRONG when you claimed it was less than the 5% ROI for the stock market. So you gish galloped off to another asinine claim.
Sad.
No, solar panels don't crash. Unless you throw the on the ground in your temper tantrum. There's no "opportunity cost" lost, either. Maybe if you imagine one into existence, but nobody outside your deluded brain can see your imaginings.
it is actually about par. But of course panels fucking crash. My parents have replaced 6 panels since their installation at significant cost (even though the panels themselves were replaced under warranty the lost generation and installation was not).
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Roofs get replaced in Europe when for some odd reason the wood construction below it is damaged to much. ... unless I'm dependent on the power they produce and consider a replacement for that reason.
In other words: a roof lasts 500 years or longer. No idea why one would replace a perfect working roof, and the Tesla tiles look like perfect shingles to me. If I buy them today I would have them on on my roof for centuries
Re: Who would have thought it possible? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure why that is, as the weather shouldn't affect them as much since they have that extra layer on top, but apparently that doesn't account for runoff, which is actually as bad as it is if the rain and elements hit the roof directly.
In the southwest US, PV panels make a lot of sense as there is plenty of sunshine with little rain and frequently no snow exposure. Here, panels protect roofing shingles from solar exposure and extend their life significantly.
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If you wring your hands fast enough, will you combust?
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That is just not true. Most projects are constrained by the amount of up-front money available to spend.
No, it's because Trump (Score:1)
Mnuchin did the money printing thing, $600 billion a year in extra borrowing, should be about 3.1% growth annualized, just from the money printing alone (growth is measured in growth in money supply, so you print more money, you create 'growth', but the baseline for that growth is how much the borrowing alone would have created in that number). So you have 0.1% growth above the dilution (3.2% annualize in Q1 2019 minus 3.1% growth from debt).
But did the trickle down effect of giving money to rich people cre
Re:The problem is still density (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's going to reach the point where it's not worth paying the standing charges for connection to the grid any more. Get a few batteries, disconnect.
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It's going to reach the point where it's not worth paying the standing charges for connection to the grid any more. Get a few batteries, disconnect.
Depends on where you are. Here in Portland, OR, USA the net metering "standing charge" is $12 a month. There is no way I could maintain a battery system capable of being annually electrically neutral for $12 a month. In order to go off grid and "disconnect", I would need to be annually electrically neutral, which would take an large amount of battery storage - In my case I would need about 1,700 KWh of battery storage.
For those not familiar with net metering, when you generate more power then you use that
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In my case I would need about 1,700 KWh of battery storage
What kind of house are you living in? 1700kWh is the better part of a year's worth of electricity in Poland!
Average per house consumption in Poland in 2015 was 2003kWh (http://www.odyssee-mure.eu/publications/efficiency-by-sector/households/electricity-consumption-dwelling.html). So about 5kWh per day.
So if you wanted a week of backup power you would need 35kWh of storage, similar to one of the cheaper electric cars on the market. For a whole week with zero generation.
Even in western Europe it's only about
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Even if it cuts my electricity bill by 75%, solar will take 20 plus years to pay itself off. During that time I'd need to replace the roof and do other repairs affecting the solar cell system.
Does not make any sense as I'm going to move before 20 years and my local electric utility gets 50% of its power from wind.
Here in rainy and cloudy Portland, OR, USA the break even point (with government subsidies) is about 8 years. Without those subsidies (which is a whole other discussion as to merit), it's probably 30 years. In sunnier places the non subsidy break even would be more reasonable.
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If your panels are made of plastic, and exposed to extreme weather, and their efficiency drops to zero because they've never been maintained or they've just worn out, then "the roof" being replaced is more like "the solar panels" being replaced.
There isn't much that can take 20 years of just sitting out in most weathers. Some places, you might be lucky. Other places have to deal with rain, mould, snow, hail, extreme heat, dust, sand.
My shed wouldn't last 20 years. My gutters wouldn't (they'd at least nee