While I don't disagree, there aren't any investment vehicles that return a guaranteed 5% tax-free and you neglect the remaining value of the system after 25 years (maybe $0, probably not).
In Arizona one utility wants everyone to pay a $10+/kW peak demand charge plus an 8 cents/kWh difference between peak and off peak rates. A 10kWh battery along with a smart load controller that can reduce that peak demand by 5kW can save you $50mo and if you can shift 10kWh/day from peak to off peak rates that is another $24/mo. Almost $75/mo just from the battery or $900/yr. Is that worth investing $8000 in a couple of PowerWall units and a smart controller? Are demand rates and peak/off peak rate differences going to rise over time? Probably.
Add in solar panels and you can probably reduce your peak demand to zero during the on-peak window and without needing to send any excess power to the utility (desireable since utilities are pushing punitive extra charges for grid-tied solar that are avoided if you don't sell back to the utility).
I think Elon and Solar City recognize that the utilities are doing their best to make solar net metering completely impractical and the solution is PowerWall to avoid net metering surcharges and get quick payback by reducing peak demand usage charges (where if the ONLY power you used the entire month was 10kWh during a single 1 hour period they could charge you $101.50 ($10.15/kWh) for power they want to buy from your neighbor's solar panels for 20 cents. Utilities want to even charge a per kW fee for you merely having solar panels hooked to the grid, meaning even if you never feed power back into the grid they want you to pay them for having solar panels on your roof.
All that gouging on the part of utilities goes away if you avoid net metering and get batteries with a smart controller. The more the utilities push peak demand usage charges the more sense batteries make. The utilities have done a great job of undercutting the economics of roof top solar but once affordable batteries get added to the equation they are back to losing their ability to control their future.
There is a reason for using micro-inverters instead of a "central, single, high-quality, high-power inverter".
It has nothing to do with cost or quality. It's nonsense that all you want coming from your roof is well filtered DC, that's simply a statement on your part with no basis. Many homes have grid tie connections at their roof-line that provide them AC power.
The 5kW PowerWall rating is for a single unit and single units aren't intended to provide power for your entire home, you parallel them up to whatever peak amp rating and kWh capacity your design calls for. They can be used to time shift power consumption, reduce peak demand or let you run off-grid, your choice.,
Everything has a "decidedly limited lifetime". Maybe by "decidedly" you mean something more specific like an expected lifetime. Most things in your home from your roof to your air conditioner also have expected lifetimes.
There is no "ongoing maintenance" with the PowerWall units that differs from anything else in your home. You dust your lightbulbs, wipe off your fridge and that's pretty much the sum of the "ongoing maintenance" for the PowerWall units.
Most people bitch about their cell phone battery life but that hasn't led to Apple doing anything but making their phones thinner and their batteries smaller.
Maybe what most people want has nothing to do with it and it is more a matter of advertising thinnest and lightest works even though people end up disappointed about things that actually matter like battery life.
Good luck with that 10 hours of battery life doing more than watching videos, at low brightness with WiFi turned off.
Revenue dropped from Q4 2015 to Q4 2016, comparable quarters. That Q4 is their slowest quarter is irrelevant.
In addition, revenue for the entire fiscal year 2016 was lower than fiscal year 2015.
"return to profitability"? They are quite profitable, they won't be returning to something they already are.
Apple chooses their end of year to come shortly after the introduction of new phones for a reason, it lets them manage their Q4 revenue and earnings in order to make their numbers without pulling too much revenue into Q4 from the next year. Tim Cook is about managing Wall Street, they don't forecast more than a quarter out and make their forecast when the quarter is already 1/3rd done.
Their share buybacks are also used to manage their earnings per share number.
While Apple remains wildly profitable, there is going to be an end high priced, high margin phones. Indeed it may well be that the idea of carting around a phone with a screen disappears as completely as carting around a music player did. Amazon and Google think they can wean us away from carting phones around in our homes and I think they'll succeed.
"For them to have a fully loaded semi on the freeway and the driver to get in the back seat was blatantly irresponsible. This experiment should never even have been legal."
1) You have zero knowledge of what their system does and you ASSUME that they were "blatantly irresponsible" 2) You have zero knowledge of what the legalities are or what they did to ensure that their experiment was approved and legal.
Any other questions?
Chew on this a bit, a couple of days ago a bus smashed into the back of a semi doing 5mph on I-10 near Palm Springs. 13 people died.
"Some 400,0000 trucks crash each year, according to federal statistics, killing about 4,000 people. In almost every case, human error is to blame. "
Humans have shown a remarkable amount of blatant irresponsibility behind the wheel, to the tune of about 30,000 killed and hundreds of thousands seriously injured every year every year in the US. I applaud Otto's safe and legally authorized trial of their Level 4 autonomous truck system. Look up what Level 4 is.
Do you understand that trains are already used for shipping? Your premise suggests that, somehow, shippers aren't smart enough to pick trains when they make more sense.
If trucking can be made to operate even more efficiency that is a winning proposition even if trains exist.
It's merely your assumption that the brand has been damaged. The vast majority of Note 7 owners never had an issue with their phone, it was recalled and they were inconvenienced. The VW situation was different, all the VW's recalled were defective. VW owners were all deceived. It remains to be seen if the Note 7 issues involved more than an excessively high rate of failure (which could still be a very low rate of failure) of batteries or was something deeper.
That sounds shocking if not for the fact that everyone eligible for Social Security can start collecting at age 62 and has been able to do so for decades.
Nearly 50% of people eligible for Social Security make the choice to collect benefits at age 62, they receive a smaller check for the earlier payout.
Social Security disability payments virtually ALL go to persons under age 65 because a disability payment converts to a regular Social Security check at retirement age. So that skews the numbers lower.
Let's look at actual numbers (https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/chartbooks/fast_facts/2015/fast_facts15.pdf) About four-fifths of all OASDI beneficiaries in current-payment status were aged 62 or older, including 22 percent aged 75–84 and 9 percent aged 85 or older. About 15 percent were persons aged 18–61 receiving benefits as disabled workers, survivors, or dependents. Another 5 percent were children under age 18.
Anything shock you there?
Not even sure why the age 65 thing bothers you, age 62 is when you become eligible for a reduced Social Security retirement benefit and almost half the people who become eligible elect to take smaller checks at age 62 instead of waiting till full retirement age.
You don't even provide a basis for claiming that Obama has anything to do, much less "has done everything he could to expand", with Social Security spending. As the baby boomer population ages there are more people eligible to start collecting their Social Security retirement check. Look at the chart on p 14 of the link I provided above, the number of NEW retired workers has jumped dramatically since about 2003 Obama didn't make people older and the retirement age hasn't decreased.
Slashdot Mirror
The US consumers about 7 billion barrels of oil per year
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs...
That means a 2 billion barrel find would last less than 4 months
That makes your 2nd guess the closest
While I don't disagree, there aren't any investment vehicles that return a guaranteed 5% tax-free and you neglect the remaining value of the system after 25 years (maybe $0, probably not).
In Arizona one utility wants everyone to pay a $10+/kW peak demand charge plus an 8 cents/kWh difference between peak and off peak rates. A 10kWh battery along with a smart load controller that can reduce that peak demand by 5kW can save you $50mo and if you can shift 10kWh/day from peak to off peak rates that is another $24/mo. Almost $75/mo just from the battery or $900/yr. Is that worth investing $8000 in a couple of PowerWall units and a smart controller? Are demand rates and peak/off peak rate differences going to rise over time? Probably.
Add in solar panels and you can probably reduce your peak demand to zero during the on-peak window and without needing to send any excess power to the utility (desireable since utilities are pushing punitive extra charges for grid-tied solar that are avoided if you don't sell back to the utility).
I think Elon and Solar City recognize that the utilities are doing their best to make solar net metering completely impractical and the solution is PowerWall to avoid net metering surcharges and get quick payback by reducing peak demand usage charges (where if the ONLY power you used the entire month was 10kWh during a single 1 hour period they could charge you $101.50 ($10.15/kWh) for power they want to buy from your neighbor's solar panels for 20 cents. Utilities want to even charge a per kW fee for you merely having solar panels hooked to the grid, meaning even if you never feed power back into the grid they want you to pay them for having solar panels on your roof.
All that gouging on the part of utilities goes away if you avoid net metering and get batteries with a smart controller. The more the utilities push peak demand usage charges the more sense batteries make. The utilities have done a great job of undercutting the economics of roof top solar but once affordable batteries get added to the equation they are back to losing their ability to control their future.
HOA's aren't allowed to not allow solar panel in the majority of states most suited for solar power.
Price shouldn't be the only consideration
There is a reason for using micro-inverters instead of a "central, single, high-quality, high-power inverter".
It has nothing to do with cost or quality. It's nonsense that all you want coming from your roof is well filtered DC, that's simply a statement on your part with no basis. Many homes have grid tie connections at their roof-line that provide them AC power.
The 5kW PowerWall rating is for a single unit and single units aren't intended to provide power for your entire home, you parallel them up to whatever peak amp rating and kWh capacity your design calls for. They can be used to time shift power consumption, reduce peak demand or let you run off-grid, your choice.,
Everything has a "decidedly limited lifetime". Maybe by "decidedly" you mean something more specific like an expected lifetime. Most things in your home from your roof to your air conditioner also have expected lifetimes.
There is no "ongoing maintenance" with the PowerWall units that differs from anything else in your home. You dust your lightbulbs, wipe off your fridge and that's pretty much the sum of the "ongoing maintenance" for the PowerWall units.
You say "as many resources as possible" but the article's title says "all necessary resources"
You may live in the same reality distortion field as Donald
It isn't slow, it isn't inefficient and it isn't dangerous.
But don't let that stop you from enjoying your daily digging around looking for the charging cord to plug into.
$200 to add 8GB of RAM
$50 for the RAM and $150 for the Apple tax
You must not have looked to hard, I saw it multiple times during their presentation.
You did a survey of what most people want?
Most people bitch about their cell phone battery life but that hasn't led to Apple doing anything but making their phones thinner and their batteries smaller.
Maybe what most people want has nothing to do with it and it is more a matter of advertising thinnest and lightest works even though people end up disappointed about things that actually matter like battery life.
Good luck with that 10 hours of battery life doing more than watching videos, at low brightness with WiFi turned off.
A DDOS doesn't require CPU power, but maybe you were trying to be funny.
Revenue dropped from Q4 2015 to Q4 2016, comparable quarters. That Q4 is their slowest quarter is irrelevant.
In addition, revenue for the entire fiscal year 2016 was lower than fiscal year 2015.
"return to profitability"? They are quite profitable, they won't be returning to something they already are.
Apple chooses their end of year to come shortly after the introduction of new phones for a reason, it lets them manage their Q4 revenue and earnings in order
to make their numbers without pulling too much revenue into Q4 from the next year. Tim Cook is about managing Wall Street, they don't forecast more than a quarter out and make their forecast when the quarter is already 1/3rd done.
Their share buybacks are also used to manage their earnings per share number.
While Apple remains wildly profitable, there is going to be an end high priced, high margin phones. Indeed it may well be that the idea of carting around a phone with a screen disappears as completely as carting around a music player did. Amazon and Google think they can wean us away from carting phones around in our homes and I think they'll succeed.
Would you like me to list all the assumptions?
"For them to have a fully loaded semi on the freeway and the driver to get in the back seat was blatantly irresponsible. This experiment should never even have been legal."
1) You have zero knowledge of what their system does and you ASSUME that they were "blatantly irresponsible"
2) You have zero knowledge of what the legalities are or what they did to ensure that their experiment was approved and legal.
Any other questions?
Chew on this a bit, a couple of days ago a bus smashed into the back of a semi doing 5mph on I-10 near Palm Springs. 13 people died.
"Some 400,0000 trucks crash each year, according to federal statistics, killing about 4,000 people. In almost every case, human error is to blame. "
Humans have shown a remarkable amount of blatant irresponsibility behind the wheel, to the tune of about 30,000 killed and hundreds of thousands seriously injured every year every year in the US. I applaud Otto's safe and legally authorized trial of their Level 4 autonomous truck system. Look up what Level 4 is.
Are you still upset that street lights no longer require someone to light them every night?
Similar to getting rid of dangerous gas street lights, the self-driving trucks will be both safer and less expensive.
Do you understand that trains are already used for shipping? Your premise suggests that, somehow, shippers aren't smart enough to pick trains when they make more sense.
If trucking can be made to operate even more efficiency that is a winning proposition even if trains exist.
You made a lot of assumptions.
Try to not do that
Even better is when they do that going uphill at 35mph.
Using a Model S for Uber isn't prohibited. Only if you use it in autonomous mode with something like Uber, something that is only a future concept.
One reasonable explanation could be that Tesla doesn't want the liability.
There aren't four times as many chips used for the flash memory in the 128GB model, there are exactly the same number of chips. One.
You are clearly wrong if you believe there are multiple flash memory die on the 128GB model.
The phones use either ONE SK Hynix H23Q1T8QK2MYS 128GB chip or ONE Toshiba THGBX6T0T8LLFXE 128GB chip
From the summary:
"offering a new Note 7 and about $900"
They did more than offer to just reimburse him for his loss.
It's merely your assumption that the brand has been damaged. The vast majority of Note 7 owners never had an issue with their phone, it was recalled and they were inconvenienced. The VW situation was different, all the VW's recalled were defective. VW owners were all deceived. It remains to be seen if the Note 7 issues involved more than an excessively high rate of failure (which could still be a very low rate of failure) of batteries or was something deeper.
I'm not sure what characteristics you are using for inclusion in your choices, there are other phones with similar hardware. For example, the LG V20.
Easily combusts?
I hope we get a more detailed analysis of what the cause of the failures was and what the likely lifetime failure rate was.
It would be a shame if Samsung has to destroy all those beautiful Note 7's, perhaps they'll show up in foreign markets with a new battery eventually.
That sounds shocking if not for the fact that everyone eligible for Social Security can start collecting at age 62 and has been able to do so for decades.
Nearly 50% of people eligible for Social Security make the choice to collect benefits at age 62, they receive a smaller check for the earlier payout.
Social Security disability payments virtually ALL go to persons under age 65 because a disability payment converts to a regular Social Security check at retirement age. So that skews the numbers lower.
Let's look at actual numbers (https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/chartbooks/fast_facts/2015/fast_facts15.pdf)
About four-fifths of all OASDI beneficiaries in current-payment status were aged 62 or older,
including 22 percent aged 75–84 and 9 percent aged 85 or older. About 15 percent were
persons aged 18–61 receiving benefits as disabled workers, survivors, or dependents. Another
5 percent were children under age 18.
Anything shock you there?
Not even sure why the age 65 thing bothers you, age 62 is when you become eligible for a reduced Social Security retirement benefit and almost half the people who become eligible elect to take smaller checks at age 62 instead of waiting till full retirement age.
You don't even provide a basis for claiming that Obama has anything to do, much less "has done everything he could to expand", with Social Security spending. As the baby boomer population ages there are more people eligible to start collecting their Social Security retirement check. Look at the chart on p 14 of the link I provided above, the number of NEW retired workers has jumped dramatically since about 2003 Obama didn't make people older and the retirement age hasn't decreased.
They keep accounts active by letting hackers use them