Tesla's New York Gigafactory Kicks Off Solar Roof Production
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I do however, want to point out Buffalo .. its troubles with Solar City .. and its troubles with Elon Musk.
Key (non-disputed / non-political points)
- Tesla did not hire local workers, and did not hold up on its end for diversity of work-force - SolarCity received 750$ million in the Billion to Buffalo at a time it hadn't operated at a profit in over 2 years (I believe) - Ciminelli, Buffalo's prior largest construction company that built SolarCity was charged with bid rigging / bribery by the Federal Government and it has all but folded up shop. - Panasonic / Tesla agreement / partnership existed in 2006, yet Cuomo said he brokered this deal (fabrication)
The Riverbend site that SolarCity started has all but been successful in Erie County. That's my 2c, and the above is factual, non-disputed points.
So .. my real question, is why is this not brought to the national level for discussion to what Elon is doing to communities like Buffalo, where I live? That's my question ...
The money / jobs / growing enthusiasm isn't reflected in a minority middle class. Bottom line, that's what I personally call success of any city trying to regain momentum. By all accounts, I am an educated, white, privileged, and successful conservative living in the suburbs.
However, I take the post-Civil War northern Republican view of reconstruction by giving the vision of today should be the vision of 1865 .. and that's equality of all minorities with their white counterparts. The death of Abe Lincoln put us back 50 - 70 years in that movement, and as Andrew Johnson favored the status quote of Southern Democrats / Aristocratic colonialism ... it bleeds into the inequities that minorities today.
I know that's long winded, but the historical throw-back .. plays out today, in cities like Buffalo .. where all I want is my black / latino / muslim communities of Buffalo to have the same equity that I have and live as well as I do. Unfortunately ... it's just not happening, despite the welfare dollar being so dominant here in New York (which I do not detest - I just want it used more strategically in regions of poverty).
Anyway .. off my soap-box.
I grew up in Buffalo (on the west side) among the minorities you mentioned - nothing stopped my peers (white, black, hispanic, etc) in school from succeeding except their own choices. It helps to have supportive parents, but it doesn't guarantee anything (my brother never got into any trouble but he's also never been motivated/driven either.) A friend who wound up being class valedictorian had two siblings that were both dropouts.
poverty != lack of opportunity
My grandparents were poor (my grandfather never learned to read - he went to work in the fields in Sicily at age 8) - that didn't stop him from working hard all of his life, buying a house, raising a family.
Whether the city's leadership truly believe the corporation will aid them is up in the air, most of the time the city loses out, and the corporation leaves when the incentives dry up. If you're optimistic, than many city council members just get unlucky because it is 100% 'beneficial in theory and just not in practice'. If you're a little more skeptical, given this corporatist strong arming happens nationwide constantly, it is just the reality of corporations exploiting cities.
And how much of that is a direct result of the fact they are competing against Chinese-made panels that are directly funded by the Chinese government?
There is literally no way you can have a discussion about ANY renewable energy without it being political. Either the US is going to protect US industry from Chinese goods being sold below-cost, or we're going to have to do the same thing to compete.
You're assuming the politicians have the area's best interest at heart. Start by thinking - what's in it for them? Good press for bringing in a nationally recognized brand to the area. Maybe campaign contributions from said company. Maybe you get thrown some more campaign contributions from the construction companies that get work out of the deal.
Keep in mind the opportunity cost for these deals. Cut the company a tax break, or continue to not collect taxes on a vacant lot. If Buffalo actually brought cash to the table... that was quite a gamble.
Because Buffalo isn't a place that attracts much attention about anything outside of lake-effect snow and how terrible the Buffalo Bills are.
These silver-bullet projects that promise to bring large number of high-paying jobs rarely pan out. Remember when Yahoo put in that data center in Lockport (just outside of Buffalo for everyone not familiar with the area)? It was touted as a big win...as of two years ago they have a whopping 98 employees (most making less than 6 figures according to Glassdoor.)
https://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/blog/science-and-technol...
(I was born in Buffalo and lived there for 35 years before moving south.)
Oddly enough its not the amount of snow, but rather the severity of it. I was born in Virginia - dad in Florida, mom in Georgia. :) I'm here because pops moved to Syracuse and I lived in Cortland area, before moving here (and a stint for college in AL).
What really WAS the catalyst for downtown was not SolarCity or anything major, but the total opposite.
Chris Collins (R) - despite his negative reputation - started out as our County Executive and in combination with Brian Higgins, balanced our budget and make Buffalo profitable for once after some dark economic times, while Higgins asked Bass Pro its intentions at the for Aud site (previous home of the Sabres). They (after several years of promising to build a mega-store) backed out and we created a ton of smaller projects - not continuing on the path of the "silver-bullet" approach to anchoring the downtown on.
So ... Republican ideas (not dominant liberal thinking) IMHO was the catalyst. Collins comes from the business sector, much like Trump. Mind you, I am not trying to make a political point here - merely a strategic small business / economic en-devour that helped Buffalo get back on its right track.
Mayor Brown is actually a good mayor. Thoughtful even .. but Collins set him up to be - again subjective opinion. I like Byron personally ... and lukewarm on his politics, however ... he has maintained great en-devours here. I just hope he goes into the East Side of Buffalo with as much as we have here as downtown.
I remain optimistic that the leadership we have now, will see the benefits of making our minority populations ... better.
That sound a lot like liberal thinking to me. Traditional Republican philosophy is generally to seek out one or two major storefronts to anchor an entire town. It's pretty much the entire economic premise of the extremely red Midwest. I'm not trying to make a political point, just pointing out that copying the strategy most frequently used by large, liberal cities like LA, Chicago, SF, and NYC (lots of economic projects spread out over the metropolitan area) helped Buffalo get back on the right track.
How can you make a generalization like that with a straight face? I spent a significant number of years in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho and most of the Republicans I interacted with there were pro small business and disliked dominating large chains owned by out of state corporations. A single store without meaningful competition is antithetical to the message of the Republican party.
You are confusing what naturally happens when you have small cities (<200k) not filled with rich people with a political view. When you have small cities, anyone with a large war chest can pretty easily bully everyone else on price and a regular middle class population will not pay a significant premium to 'support local'.
Talk to folks in a town dominated by a Walmart. Tons of people hate going there but still do because it's the best price.
Finally, the only thing that gets a smaller city on the right track is businesses that attract outside money. A small city will never thrive regardless of building one huge retail store vs tons of small ones if the same small population are the only folks shopping there. The easiest way for city to get external money pouring in is to accept a deal for a big industrial operation.
Buffalo is hampered by being in the same state as NYC - it's too far from it to reap any of the benefits. High taxes, a ton of regulation, red tape and little to no political sway at the state level. If NYC were to secede and form its own state/district/etc, Buffalo and the rest of upstate NY might be better off.
It's near and dear to my heart, but nothing will save Buffalo. Will it get better? Sure, but not fast enough to stop the bleeding:
"Buffalo, on the other hand, has experienced the sharpest rate of decline, losing 61.75 people per month."
Source: https://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/news/2017/10/31/upstate-...
Meanwhile, in the Raleigh, NC area where I moved is growing at ~62 per day or ~1860/month.
The only movie about Buffalo I know of literally features lake-effect snow, how terrible the Bills are, and the tap dancing of Christina Ricci.
Meanwhile, Wisconsin is bending over backward to give somewhere near $4Billion to foxconn to build a new manufacturing facility in Wisconsin, and everytime someone asks if they should spend that much, they get "10,000 JOBS" shouted at them.. (even then, that seems like way too much per job, at $300,000 in direct state subsidy per employee, if they get to 10,000, but its an impressive sounding number). then they have local subsidies, promised freeway widening, etc..
If we can't get tax cuts across the board, then I'm all for reducing taxes on whoever we can, however we can.
The truth is that there's plenty to appreciate and hate in both sectors, but there's only one that forces us to finance it, and we don't like being forced to finance something without having much say in the matter or if the results are suboptimal.
If Foxconn has 10 apples and they decide to move to Wisconsin. When they arrive, Wisconsin decides to NOT take 4 Apples away. How many apples does Foxconn have left?
I could be down with taxation if someone actually offered me a contract to join the USA with all the provisions. But they didn't, they just implicitly assumed it, without my consent.
I mean if I have enough power and there’s no one to stop me, I may as well take your property AND your person and make you work for me.
It’s just a matter of who has the most guns, and my willingness to cheat on the rules of the game.(you assume individual rights, I don’t)
Do note this is more of a tongue in cheek question, than a serious one.
The private property I referred is land right, which IS as old as civilisation and have been acceptable by most humans ever.
Since most democracies are less than 200yrs old, the taxation cannot have been as old as civilisation.
When 100 people form a camp, they implement property rights before taxation. Historically taxations have been imposed by distant rulers not socially decided at local level.
That would be true if the concept of taxation was dependent on the concept of democracy (and if it was correct that democracy was less than 200 years old, which is off by around an order of magnitude), which it is quite obviously not; taxation long precedes democracy.
> Historically taxations have been imposed by distant rulers
Historically, taxation (until fairly recently, in-kind; money taxes as the primary form is fairly new) has been imposed at every level from small bands to vast empires; it certainly is not correct that they've normally been imposed by distant rulers.
Historically, taxation has been imposed at every level from small bands to vast empires
Agreed.
it certainly is not correct that they've normally been imposed by distant rulers
Then by whom is it normally imposed ? Give an example of a historic taxation voted and imposed by a small-band/.../vast-empire on itself.
Coming back to the topic, my claim is that private property social contract have been more stable than taxation (the social-contract version).
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
So who should pay for the US military so that your private property is safe from Russian attacks.
It’s effectively putting cash directly into the pocket of the businesses you seek to attract.
Can you explain further? Also would help if you can add links to for further reading.
But I'm guessing these are not brought to the national level for discussion because none of them are unique to this company or that community?
The factory is in an area that's been basically abandoned since Bethlehem Steel closed up shop. A large factory with people working there is likely to increase people spending money at local places in the nearby area (restaurants, stores, apartments, etc.).
The alternative for that area is a large empty field.
I also knew Chris Collins as a kid growing up (he lived near me) and he seemed reasonable at the time, but his current Trump related political comments come across as ridiculous.
Your third point seems to be more of an issue with a local construction company and the last point seems to be an issue with Cuomo. Could you clarify? Am I missing some connections?
Aren’t we still better off?
That's with panels to give equivalent power output. You're essentially paying a $35k premium for a sleeker install.
Maybe for the bay area where homes are often over $2mm and the desire for such a roof is plausibly high.
That being said, I'm skeptical of their claim. Not many things are indestructible when a large hailstorm rolls through.
Plain Solar Panel (non roof) installation has gone from $52k to $20k in the last decade [1] which is craziness.
The other aspect of this is longevity. Setting all solar power generation aspects aside an asphalt roof will generally last 20-25 years. Tesla roof tiles appear to last much longer (infinite warranty, etc.) and are maybe more comparable to a slate roof which would be 10x the cost of an asphalt roof.
As a reference point, I grew up in a house built in the 1920s and just confirmed via Google Streetview that it still has it's original slate roof.
1 - https://news.energysage.com/solar-panel-efficiency-cost-over...
You'll no doubt recoup some of your value, but not all of it.
Witness dozens of TV shows, "You guys had $50K for your reno budget. Your original value was $250K, and you spent $50K and now your house is worth $350K!"
Does Tesla have any sort of public lifetime estimates?
As for the different constants point -- you can model anything as an exponential function with a small enough coefficient. Moore's law is significant because it doubles every two years.
Economies of scale is in reference to mass production (scale). Making 1000 widgets is cheaper than making 10 widgets on a per widget basis. This is fundamentally different from the predictions made by Gordon Moore.
It's also like to point out that Moore's Law hasn't applied for a while now. Ultimately, we'd be at >5nm, and that's nowhere near ready.
I have a slate roof now, and pay a few hundred a year for replacement of broken skates. For historical-commission reasons, I’m much more likely to do Tesla-style tiles than anything else... and electricity here is 22¢/kWh.
Lifespan is kind of a leading question as many buildings simply are not going to last. Still, the high end for slate is very high. "There is a chapel in England, built during the 8th century, which has one of the oldest slate roofs known. After 1,200 years of service, the moss-covered roof is still in good condition, demonstrating the permanence of the material."
In the UK most tiles are made of clay which are cheap and pretty durable. My neighbourhood is Victorian and I guarantee some of the houses here still have their original tiles. Some towns have slate roofs (e.g. the Lake District), but it's more expensive and a local aesthetic/tradition, more than anything else.
Virtually nobody uses shingle roofs. To give an idea of the historic distribution, which is still pretty accurate: http://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/claytile/pic_12...
Replacement prices, for example: https://local.which.co.uk/advice/cost-price-information-roof...
An entire slate roof on a big house is around £12k max. I'm surprised that the difference isn't that much compared to clay, but I imagine most of the cost is labour.
It's a factory. Yes, a big factory. But not bigger than a hundred that came before it. And even if it was, it doesn't warrant a new word.
Did you know that everyone who buys a Tesla is not, in fact, purchasing a dead Serbian-American guy?
I agree in the Buffalo case, but the Nevada one is the largest factory in existence by footprint (Boeing wins by volume).
So my upside is capped at getting free electricity, which’ll save me $100-150 a month. That’s not nothing, but it’ll take a LONG time to recoup the cost.
Edit: I clarified a sentence.
type about:config in url and set value to false
https://github.com/Eloston/disable-html5-autoplay https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-html5-auto...
(A billion square ft factory, according to Wolfram Alpha, would occupy ~35 square miles or 92 sq. km.)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-31/tesla-sta...
Which is admittedly not large by global standards, but bigger than any solar manufacturing facility that has operated in the US.
via https://www.tesla.com/gigafactory
Doesn't explain why they call Buffalo's operation a "Gigafactory," but that's the origin of the name for the more well-known Nevada-based Gigafactory.
Maybe it's just a form of inflation of hype :) What used to be called mega this and mega that, is now called giga this and that?
Page 35, pretty much sums it all up.
http://eig.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2017-Distressed-Co...
The price of solar panels dropped. Now I have a box full of solar cells and it just isn't worth it to go the DIY route. The Solar Roof is out of my price range.
Alternatively, you might be able to sell the cells (at a loss) to recoup some funds and still end up with solar power for cheaper than you were originally intending to pay!
From where I sit that is wickedly more expensive. I had a new composite roof installed 2 years ago for $2,900
Makes them charge somewhat when parked on the street or in an open parking lot :)
To power computer microwave and water heater only.
In addition to the other points made (you often won't be able to charge enough for typical usage), you're also weighing down the car, and you're also immediately disincentivized from parking in a garage, while a house is never not going to be outside.