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Thread: A crystal ball and solarcity

  1. #16
    Tony Fracasso - Admin
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    Here is the thing about the Tesla and SolarCity merger. SolarCity is all about the collection of solar power. Tesla on the other hand is making huge advancements in the areas of power storage and batteries. Right now, people sell the power back to the grid but what if you could eventually 'grow' your own power and keep it for later use? That's the future.
    That is why I know my idea of the "power cube" will change the world

    Basically a high amp battery that can be refueled as needed that doesn't produce pollution. Entire industries would go obsolete. Then you wonder if "government" would allow that to happen.

  2. #17
    Member leftWNYbecauseofBS's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by WNYresident View Post
    That is why I know my idea of the "power cube" will change the world

    Basically a high amp battery that can be refueled as needed that doesn't produce pollution. Entire industries would go obsolete. Then you wonder if "government" would allow that to happen.
    You mean the Tesla Powerwall? https://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall

    Tesla Home Battery
    Powerwall is a home battery that charges using electricity generated from solar panels, or when utility rates are low, and powers your home in the evening. It also fortifies your home against power outages by providing a backup electricity supply. Automated, compact and simple to install, Powerwall offers independence from the utility grid and the security of an emergency backup.

  3. #18
    Tony Fracasso - Admin
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    The powerwall requires sunlight with solar panels to recharge.

    My powercube idea is a fully self contained power generator no bigger than a 6" X 6" X 6" cube. We'll even have the powercube+. Power output with builtin wifi

    I looked into the powerwall when they first were mentioned. Not a bad idea. I wonder how much "pollution" is produced to make the powerwall even though there may be next to no pollution operating it.

  4. #19
    Member leftWNYbecauseofBS's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by WNYresident View Post
    The powerwall requires sunlight with solar panels to recharge.

    My powercube idea is a fully self contained power generator no bigger than a 6" X 6" X 6" cube. We'll even have the powercube+. Power output with builtin wifi

    I looked into the powerwall when they first were mentioned. Not a bad idea. I wonder how much "pollution" is produced to make the powerwall even though there may be next to no pollution operating it.
    How is your 'cube' powered? How is it recharged?

  5. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by leftWNYbecauseofBS View Post
    How is your 'cube' powered? How is it recharged?

    Maybe with love?

  6. #21
    Member steven's Avatar
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    SolarCity has a debt-to-equity ratio of 3.492 as of March 2016. Tesla has a ratio of 3.215 as of the same date.

    Tesla is in a unique position as an automaker because its market is still largely undeveloped. Competitors in the space like Fiat Chrysler and General Motors have much lower ratios in the ballpark of 1.6 and 1.7 respectively. Ford is a notable exception, but for the most part, Tesla has an elevated debt to equity ratio.

    The good news for Tesla is that most of the debt held by SolarCity is project-level debt. Morosi noted that such debt is consolidated on the SolarCity balance sheet but is all set against cash flow producing assets. This means the debt behaves much more like mortgage debt than credit card debt.


    Most analysts expect SolarCity to continue operating as normal even after the transaction date. Tesla largely has its hands full with the rollout of the Tesla Model 3. The role of SolarCity in the Tesla ecosystem will ultimately be a play for the future.

    There is also agreement that the Tesla move is bold. Tesla is still four years away from its target to hit full capacity at its lithium-ion Gigafactory. More details over time should help ease worries that Tesla acted too brashly with the acquisition. The decision could be as simple as seeing a good price and taking the opportunity regardless of timing.

    “Tesla doesn’t view this as a reaction to GE breathing down their necks,” said Troy Ault, Director of Research at Cleantech Group.

    Tesla looks at the battery side as a commodity play added Ault. Tesla is likely hedging a bet toward future battery innovation. Time will tell how it will integrate into vehicle technology.
    https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/21/te...olarcity/Tesla Motors Inc's Elon Musk On Solarcity-
    * "Solcarcity will be cash flow positive in next 3 to 6 months on the outside " - Conf call

    * "Expect solarcity to be net cash generator, not a user of cash" - Conf call

    * "Synergies from Solarcity deal are "common sense" " -Conf call

    * "Do not expect Solarcity to have material impact on future cash needs " - Conf call

    * "Final costs for both companies would go down significantly " - Conf call

    * "Potential for tesla to be trillion dollar market cap company " - Conf call

    * "I have zero doubt about the deal, should have done it sooner" - Conf call

    * "Hope for shareholder vote on both sides 'in next few months' " - Conf call

    * "Once the deal is done, the cash burn is likely to reduce " - Conf call Further company coverage
    http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSFWN19E01U


    Before Musk can buy Solarcity it has to be approved by the Telsa shareholdersso its not as sure as a thing as the news outlets are touting ( I think Musk owns about 23 or 24 percent of voting stock Telsa)

    Pros as I see it: Musk might have something here with his battery ideal, The civilian, military, and even space use is unlimited and a totally new market that will eventually be what we all use. The question is how soon, 5 yrs, 10, 20? As some commenters pointed out he is doing this exactly when they are closing Nuke plants in California and employee cost in Cali are lot more then in Buffalo.

    Cons are: Musk and Telsa burn through money, a lot of money, Solar city could be the distraction that keeps them from focusing on the core business. The trend in manufacturing has been to spin off not add new parts that don't contribute to the core.

    Either way..... Its a twist that makes things interesting
    People who wonder if the glass is half empty or full miss the point. The glass is refillable.

  7. #22
    Tony Fracasso - Admin
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    Quote Originally Posted by leftWNYbecauseofBS View Post
    How is your 'cube' powered? How is it recharged?

    With refill packs. You buy 3 for $29.95 and if you order within 7 days you will get 4 instead of 3. I should be selling pillows.. A refill pack consist of a hydrogen oxide salt type compound that can produce upwards of 100 amps of electricity over 6+ months.

    I think I was BS'ing with someone about ideas that changed the world. One idea was the wheel, light bulb and another was electricity. I said you know what would be cool. A power cube. No more electric lines or power plants. No need for gasoline engines for the most part. Just think about the lawn mower industry if you had a device that didn't need charging just a refill every few months that produced 50+ amps. Make the power cube one size fits all with the same output connection so it could be shared across multiple devices. Same one that powers your mower will power your car, your fuse panel, the motor on your boat, the lights in your cabin and fill in the blank. Oh dear. If the power cube is invented the complete solar panel industry is history and most of the oil industry. Just think how the RC plane/drone industry would change. No more 10 to 15 minute flight time. Go fly for hours. No need for nuclear power on subs. Just create a rack to hold 500 power cubes in parallel to produce 50,000 continuous amps. Or 1000 units. For the most part the cube doesn't wear out. You just pop a refill when needed. With a battery you need a charging source. With a power cube you just have a refill pill or rod. Think about the construction industry. You only wire up the rental unit internally with an outlet for your powercube. Oh dear. If the power cube is invented the entire natural gas generator industry to gone. People would have a redundant power cube next to the main cube that powers their home. And so on...

  8. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by leftWNYbecauseofBS View Post
    How is your 'cube' powered? How is it recharged?
    Leftie, that's a terribly personal question! Are you trying to make us blush?

  9. #24
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    Power cubes? I prefer a perpetual motion machine myself. I guess if we keep feeding tax $$$ to Elon Musk by the boatload all our problems are solved.

  10. #25
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    Steven, read your post...Tesla is in a unique position as an automaker because it's market is undeveloped...in other words it doesn't have a market. Cripes!

  11. #26
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    Heres a thought - One big benefit of producing solar pannels and storage batteries in the near future will be earned "Carbon Credits" - look it up.

    The owners of these industries will earn "Carbon Credits" - they can be bought , sold or traded on the Global Market.

    The credits will be calculated by the amount of "Carbon" that was not created by the use of these energy sources(Batteries/Pannels).

    Its complicated : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_credit

    Its part of Mrs Clintons plan to create a Global Money Making scheme that will in all actuality not help our environment - but it will generate tremendous piles of cash for Billionaires like Mr.Musk and others Globably.

    Check it out !
    #Dems play musical chairs + patronage and nepotism = entitlement !

  12. #27
    Member leftWNYbecauseofBS's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by grump View Post
    Steven, read your post...Tesla is in a unique position as an automaker because it's market is undeveloped...in other words it doesn't have a market. Cripes!
    There is a good read on the horrible site Salon regarding Elon Musk. They claim Elon Musk is a surprisingly old-school kind of industrialist. Here are some interesting points:

    So what does Musk get by offering to use the buoyant stock of Tesla to buy the deflated stock of SolarCity? Lashing together two companies that struggle to make a profit does not magically turn them into a single profit-making venture, even if you can cut some overlapping costs. Essentially, he is trying to pioneer a 21st-century version of what American industry did to such great effect in the late-19th and early-20th century: vertical integration.

    The way the auto industry now works is that automakers sell the cars but then let others sell the services and the fuel that make them run. General Motors doesn’t own gas stations. By not being in the fuel business, automakers are forgoing a big revenue opportunity. If gas is $3 per gallon, a car owner who drives a 25-mile-per-gallon vehicle for 100,000 miles will spend $12,000 on gas. If you could sell the power that runs the car, it would be like manufacturing and selling both the flashlight and the batteries that power them.

    That’s the type of vertical integration Musk is after here. “Tesla is not just an automotive company,” the company notes on its website. “It’s an energy innovation company.” In effect, Musk is saying that he wants to turn Tesla from a carmaker into an energy company. In theory, owning SolarCity will afford Tesla the ability to sell you the electric car, and then sell you the solar panels that generate the electricity that can power the car’s battery (which it also makes), and then sell you a wall-based battery pack that can store the electricity so you can charge the car at night. That’s the plan.



    If you look at SolarCity/Tesla through this spectrum, you start to see the end game.

    If you complete the 'loop' with a single product line, you can cut out competition from places like China. I have read where people say SolarCity can't compete with China on solar panels. This may or may not be true. But solar panels from China can't compete with a 'stack' that includes Solar Panels + Home Battery/Power Storage + Car...unless they build all three.

  13. #28
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    Leftie, I never thought of things in this way until I read your posts about building highways as secret subsidies to auto makers. My God, all that investment in public schools...just a secret subsidy to book publishers, chalk, eraser and blackboard manufactures, the producers of lunch boxes and brown lunch bags. Public sewer systems merely a secret subsidy to toilet makers, soap manufactures, washing machine makers. And on it goes. Better rewrite the history books to identify the secret decision making that led the government to favor toilet makers over the builders of out houses. Who knows, had the decision gone the other way we could all be happily crapping and pissing in the streets just like they still do in India.

  14. #29
    Member leftWNYbecauseofBS's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by grump View Post
    Leftie, I never thought of things in this way until I read your posts about building highways as secret subsidies to auto makers. My God, all that investment in public schools...just a secret subsidy to book publishers, chalk, eraser and blackboard manufactures, the producers of lunch boxes and brown lunch bags. Public sewer systems merely a secret subsidy to toilet makers, soap manufactures, washing machine makers. And on it goes. Better rewrite the history books to identify the secret decision making that led the government to favor toilet makers over the builders of out houses. Who knows, had the decision gone the other way we could all be happily crapping and pissing in the streets just like they still do in India.
    Grump I know you like to argue for the sake of it. But if you really can't see the difference between what the auto industry did and your comparisons.....

    There is a difference between the idea of building a highway system that connected the major cities and a highway system that ran right through major cities connecting the core. It's this difference that is at the hands of the auto makers. Just connecting cities was needed. It allowed for commerce between regions. It allowed for a much faster distribution of military resources if needed. That said, the system went beyond these original goals.

    Also, your comparison makes zero sense. The highway system put a preference, at the federal level, on one method of transportation over another. If you want to talk about schools, this is like the Federal government spending hundreds of billions to put high speed internet into all schools. This would in turn deemphasize the use of text books and increase the use of computers. It you want to talk about housing, this is like the Federal government spending hundreds of billions to lay a fiber network to homes. This would deemphasize cable and increase the use of internet for media.

    Let me bring it back to transportation. What do you think would happen to the airline industry if the US created a 'green book' and build a high speed rail network on the east and west coasts? I am talking about spending around $300 Billion and building a network of high speed rail roads between cities. Do you think the companies that worked in the passenger rail business would benefit? Do you think they would benefit at the expense of airlines? That is pretty much what happened with the auto industry.


    You also added the word 'secret' and that's not valid. All of this was done out in the open. But the fact remains that the Federal government can be a king maker in an industry that has competing methods. That is just a fact.

    If the US government wanted to make solar powered homes and electric cars kings they could. But they would do so at the expense of gas, coal and electric utility providers, auto makers and oil companies. Guess how much those industries combined spend on lobbying efforts?


    Anyways...my point still stands and is correct. The Federal government picked highways over other methods of travel and spend a sh*t ton of money on that. This helped the auto industry.

  15. #30
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    There will be - if Hillary is elected - a push toward solar power(and wind) ! She has already promised that in speeches to big business. Part of the agenda was to shut down the coal industry - with one speach it was done(not that simple - but it happened).

    In Nevada they have been putting up thousands and thousand of roof top solar outfits. People had to be "tied to the grid" - that means all their excess electricity goes into the grid and is sold to other users. The producer (home owner) gets a percentage - lets say two cent per Kw - the electric company sells it to his neighbor for fifteen cents.
    Then the electric companies said "WE are getting ripped off - their using our lines" - so the courts let them add a line charge on the bills of homes with solar power - so now the home owner gets one cent for Kw instead of two.( just keeping it simple)
    The Government wants to pass a federal law that says every state will have to use this same plan.

    But the real money maker for big buisness will be "Carbon Credits". The companies that produce and sell the solar pannel will earn solar credits. For every Kw generated by the solar pannel - they calculate how much feul it would have taken to generate that - then they say, "Since the solar pannel didnt create carbon during energy production" - you get a "Carbon Credit". That credit once earned can be sold on the global market. Now if you live in Africa and your factory pollutes - you buy "Carbon Credits" to offset your calculated pollution. Now with the credit you mathmatically meet emission standards - even when you dont.

    Bottom line this opens up a whole new globalmaket for buying, selling trading "Carbon Credits". A handfull of wealthy buisness owners - like Solar City - will make billions off of Carbon Credits. They know the cost of solar power alone cant sustain a constant profit, They know the cost of using solar pannels doesn't create enough power to generate major profits - so to spur a new money making scheme Hillary and friends came up with "Carbon Credits"

    Read her proposals and see how she has been promoting Solar power - yet she shy's away from the rest of the story.
    http://www.bechtel.com/projects/ivan...rating-system/
    Just a FYI - Google "Carbon Credits" -

    Google "Uranium One" - or - "Clinton Cash"
    Last edited by 4248; June 24th, 2016 at 07:09 PM.
    #Dems play musical chairs + patronage and nepotism = entitlement !

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