In this week’s top stories: A first look at Tesla’s v8.0 software update, VW’s electric range claims, and a Tesla Model S P100D takes on a $200,000 Lamborghini Huracan in this week’s top video.
Massachusetts is taking aggressive steps toward cleaning electrical grid and in doing so is joining a select group of regions around the world. Of course Germany and California get all the headlines, but also deserving are Portugal, Scotland, Hawaii, Iceland, Costa Rica, Uruguay throwing down part of $285B worth in 2015. There are also the global giants China and India building massive amounts of infrastructure.
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If you are still waiting for your Tesla Powerwall order it’s because this guy in Australia is hogging them all. OK, maybe not all, but 6 units – making his installation one of the biggest home energy storage in the country.
Natural Solar, one of Tesla’s authorized resellers in Australia, just completed the installation at the home of Clayton Lyndon in Queensland. The company released the details and the expectations of the system on Lyndon’s energy production/consumption.
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This month we reported on an EV enthusiast who transformed their Bayliner into an all-electric boat using Tesla battery modules. Now we take a look at a team of individuals who have their autonomous, solar-powered boat, dubbed the Seacharger, traversing the Pacific ocean towards New Zealand.
Electricity is one of the most important things in our lives. That solar panels allows us to collect photons from the skies and drive – literally if it’s an electric vehicle – our modern world is almost magical. In our first article on residential solar, we talked about the structural aspects of a house and how they affect solar output. The next step is to decide what hardware you want to include – solar panels, inverters and racking are the three main components to a system. Solar panels get the most attention, and their amazing price drop has been the greatest driver of solar uptake over the last ten years.
A member of the Alabama Public Service Commissions (PSC), the group that regulates the state’s power companies, who voted against net metering solar power recently sought an opinion from the same PSC as to whether or not a Community Solar Power plant, paying him approximately $250,000/year for 20 years on his family’s land, would be an ethics violation. After pretty much blocking solar for regular people – he pushes for $5M from solar for himself.
The PSC (sorta – see end of article) voted against commissioner Chip Beeker’s solar plans:
“The Commission has held that business relationships with entities that intend to do business with entities the public official regulates create conflicts of interest,” Ethics Commission Executive Director Tom Albritton wrote.
The commissioner, whose son earns money from the monopoly approved power company, has doubts about climate change: “I believe that no matter what you call it, a myth is still a myth, and the so-called ‘climate change crisis’ is about as real as unicorns and little green men from Mars.”
Tesla had made it a goal to vertically integrate long prior to the current offer to purchase SolarCity. SolarCity took action purchasing a solar panel and solar racking company. A looming question becomes – how exactly will TeslaSolar protect itself in the solar inverter market? TeslaSolar could purchase a close technology partner like SolarEdge or design in house like it does with Tesla automobiles. With powerful options like these, arguments of value of cash, availability of in-house focus, risk of inaction/value of action and control over data are probably the driving considerations.
The world’s most famous and damaging nuclear meltdown is now being considered for the world’s largest solar power plant. The Ukrainian nuclear power station Chernobyl had a nuclear meltdown on April 26, 1986. Since then 1,600 square miles of land has been deemed an ‘exclusion zone’ as the radiation levels are too high for human health. But in a recent interview, Ukraine’s ecology minister said the government was negotiating with two US investment firms and four Canadian energy companies, which have expressed interest in the Chernobyl’s solar potential.
With it being an exciting and electrifying week with the opening of the Gigafactory (that we will of course be reporting on) it is also important to note other developments across the world!
India has been in the news, as we’ve seen, lately with their admirable efforts to speed up their country’s transition to more sustainable energy sources. We have already seen India announce its plan for all their cars to be electric by the year 2030, and more recently, we saw the country’s transport minister offer up its land for Tesla. Fast forward to today, as reported by Planetsave, India has now publicized their initiative to “identify and designate ‘solar zones'” in the country.
Near Melbourne, Australia lies an incredible suburban project underway dubbed Yarrabend. This development is currently home to 60 houses and is planned to eventually hit around 2500. What is unique about this venture is not only the art, food or shopping that will be near it, but that all of the houses will come standard with Tesla Powerwalls and solar panels. Via the Heidelberg Leader, Nick Marinakis, sales and marketing manager of the Glenvill development team for Yarrabend, states that the suburb…
will achieve the highest possible ESD rating under the UDIA (Urban Development Institute of Australia) Envirodevelopment scheme, a first for an infill development site in Melbourne.
In a new report released by SolarCity, we are seeing that solar power systems have a usable lifetime of at least 35 years – 40% longer than the market expects. The key finding of the report is that power degradation (annual efficiency loss) of solar panels supplied to SolarCity is as much as 35% lower than for a comparable industry-wide selection of non-SolarCity panels, which are typically expected to last for 25 years. SolarCity feels it is the implementation of a stringent and industry-leading “Total Quality Program” that has driven this.
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Following Tesla’s (TSLA) acquisition offer to SolarCity (SCTY) last week, the automaker’s stock price fell sharply, but while the market tumbled after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union the next day, the stocks of both companies outperform the market – indicating some resistance.
Now we learn that Wall Street is betting big against the companies as short interest is close to all time high and short sellers are out of shares to borrow.
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The 2016 US Presidential election is close – plenty of politics are swirling related to the solar power and renewable energy industries. Each of the candidates running for President have spoken specifically on solar power, with Clinton and Sanders expressly supporting significant growth. Sungevity has put together a fun tool that lets you tweet directly to your candidate the system size that Sungevity thinks would best fit on their residence. Raising awareness – one tweet at a time!
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Last week, Elon Musk announced his plan for Tesla to acquire SolarCity and fold the solar installer’s operations into Tesla’s own business. The offer is still contingent on board approval and shareholder votes at both companies, but Electrek has now learned that the automaker is going ahead with trademark applications to sell solar products under its ‘Tesla’ brand.
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If you read the headlines about Tesla’s plan to acquire SolarCity, you might think that the move is universally hated. The Globe and Mail wrote “Tesla stock plummets as planned SolarCity buy puzzles everybody but Musk ” – everybody but Musk? I wouldn’t be so sure.
While everyone and their mother seem to hate on the acquisition plan, the real question is: do shareholders like it? And maybe more importantly: do institutional shareholders like it? They will be the ones deciding after all.
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Tesla’s energy division has had success in winning contracts for significant energy storage projects at educational institutions in California. Last year, we reported on Tesla installing battery packs at 3 high schools in the San Diego County school districts totalling 32 MWh of capacity. The company also signed a similar deal with the Temecula Valley district and last month, we reported on Tesla installing a 4 MWh project at the College of Marin in Marin County.
Now we learn that Tesla Energy won an important 12 MWh Powerpack contract with Cal State University (CSU).
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Elon Musk surprised the business world with one of the most common sense moves I’ve seen in a while – an offering to merge Tesla and SolarCity into a single company. Musk, this morning on a conference call, stated that he sees these companies coming together to become worth $1 trillion. For that to be a realistic valuation, Tesla and SolarCity are going to have to build more Gigafactories (Solar & Battery) and blow through the 1,000,000 car/year number. With a 10:1 earnings ratio, six Gigafactories each for solar & battery plus a 30% expansion of Fremont beyond 1,000,000 cars will do it. Here’s how…
Since Tesla announced its offer to buy SolarCity, which is still contingent on a vote by the shareholders, Wall Street has turned on the company with analysts issuing notes claiming that there’s little to no value in the deal. Barclays analyst Brian Johnson issued a note saying that he sees “little in the way of synergies and much in the way of cash burn.”
It’s not like Wall Street analysts have the best foresight, Johnson himself is ranked #2,713 out of 3,984 analysts on TipRank with an average return of -0.7%, but they represent the point of view of the financial sector.
As for the point of view from the actual customer offering/product side, a merger between Tesla and SolarCity will certainly open the door for some interesting product integrations and new distribution opportunities.
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Today, Tesla (TSLA) announced that it submitted an offer to acquire SolarCity (SCTY), the leading solar installer in the US. Elon Musk is the largest individual shareholder of both companies. Due to his obvious interest in the deal, which is already being called a bailout by some shareholders, Musk decided to recuse himself from the vote at both companies and leave it to Tesla and SolarCity shareholders to decide on the possible consolidation of ‘Musk Industries’.
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According to a new research study, released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), your old solar modules will be worth $15 billion in recyclable material by the year 2050. This potential material influx could produce 2 billion new panels. IRENA estimates that PV panel waste, comprised mostly of glass, could total 78 million tonnes globally. This end of life recycling ability will help finance future solar growth, and – more importantly – when combined with current industry recyclability at 96% (goal of 100%) will mean that solar power has, beyond a doubt, environmental credibility.
On May 26, 2016 – “U.S. Rep. Mike Honda (D-Silicon Valley, Calif.) introduced H.R. 5350, the bipartisan Energy Storage for Grid Resilience and Modernization Act. Honda was joined by Reps. Chris Gibson (R-NY), Tom Reed (R-NY) and Mark Takano (D-CA).” The purpose of the legislation is to clarify that energy storage industry receives a 30% tax credit equivalent in nature to what the Renewable Energy industry gets. The 30% Solar Power Tax Credit, is credited with being one of the major drivers for the solar power installation boom in the United States.
GreentechMedia did the work to determine “Solar Made Up 64% of New Electric Generating Capacity in the US in Q1 2016.” This first quarter is part a potential 119% growth in the solar industry in 2016 – greater than $30 billion in revenue. And these announcements are on top of many other recent solar proclamations – 1,000,000 rooftops, record low pricing, leadership in jobs count and growth, whole countries running on renewables and more. With the Earth setting record warm months, every single month, its good that solar power is becoming sexy – but can we keep up the pace long enough to win the war?
Yesterday, 9to5Mac.com reported that Apple Inc has founded a new, fully owned, subsidiary known as Apple Energy and that this entity had applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC regulates power companies) to be able to sell electricity and other power grid services to anyone that is not a public utility. Does this mean that you can now buy clean electricity made on the roof of the Apple Spaceship? Unless you are a large corporate electricity user within 10-30 miles, probably not. However if we step back and take a broader view, something interesting is happening – the likes of Apple, Google, Ikea and others including even Walmart are showing us a small piece of the future of much smarter electricity grid owned by many instead of the few.
Tuesday, SolarCity produced greater than 10GWh of solar electricity via its customer base. This doubles the 5GWh peak in 2015 and more than triples the 3GWh in 2014. SolarCity has over 280,000 customers and greater than 2.16GW installed as of the end of the first quarter – that volume is expected to grow 218MW in the second quarter and to be greater than 3GW before the end of 2016. The summer day peaks around June 20 – meaning we’ll probably see more records broken.
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