ERICOPOLY

The market is efficient, so you can't underperform it consistently. Fool's errand :)

Yes but Elon claims to have dreamed about changing the world. Well, he is changing the world but he could accelerate solar adoption if he gets these soft costs down.

So $800 per panel for installation. But look at how much a professional installer is actually paid in California: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_a_solar_installer_make#page3 15 to 20 per hour depending on were you work in California theres a high demand so they pay more sorry for spelling Solar Panel installer jobs are demanding and highly dangerous, because of dealings with electricity and mainly working on roof tops even at high temperatures. Considering this aspects of the job including knowledge and education required to be able to work as an installer, and in relation to other similar jobs like air conditioning, electricians etc... and also researching the cost,(about 35k for regular American home) and government involvement and backing in this industry... A regular installer after 3 months, (of course in normal economic conditions in the country) should not make less then $21.00-$29.00/hour, But you figure a professional installer can install at least 3 per hour. So at that rate you are actually paying at least $2,400 per hour to Solar City just for labor! I think what I will do is: 1) buy the equipment 2) draw and submit the plans myself to get the permit 3) offer $50 per hour to a handyman to install the modules (this will cost $1,000 total if he installs two per hour) 4) hire an electrician to run conduit up to the roof and install the junction box (probably another $1,000 at most) My total cost, fully installed, should be under $20,000 including sales tax. Now, why does Solar City charge 150% more than that???

I reason that they install your 2.93 KW system at a profit for $14,000. Thus, the additional cost of a larger system should merely be additional parts plus per-module-installation-labor. There are roughly 12 solar modules in your system. Based on the below computations, it looks like the hardware for your 3 KW system is about $4,650 total cost for a "do-it-yourself" project. Therefore the "soft costs" on your project are at least $9,500 -- or about $800 per module for installation. So here is how I arrive at that: 1) Solar City quoted me $50,000 for a 10 KW system. 2) The solar modules for a 10KW system cost $7,448 (using Canadian Solar 245W panels -- priced by www.renvu.com) Inverters would cost another $4,200. 3) So you are looking at $11,648 dollars for the panels and the inverters. Then add lets say $3,500 for racking hardware. Total cost is about $15,000 for all the hardware to install a 10,000 watt system. Add $500 for freight delivery to the site. So there are $34,500 of "soft costs" in the 10 KW system. Divide that by the number of modules (40) and you get roughly $800 per panel. So think about that. $800 per panel for installation! And they just multiply that number by the number of panels you want installed. No cost efficiency flow to the customer.

That was my recollection. I dont think he was ever banned. No, he was never banned. He left on his own accord because you minions had no way of grasping his ginormous intellect. You fools! You could have had his trading secrets for free...now it will cost you just under 200 bucks! Although, if he could sell his book for $200, what do you think someone with an actual successful and astonishing record like Eric could sell his for? Twacowfca, you guys better sign Eric up now...he has no idea what he's worth yet. Cheers! I could sell it for the cost of my reputation, dignity, privacy all rolled into one. It would be expensive!

Right, see this is where they're gouging me on that quoted $50,421 for the 10,000 watt system. Your $14,000 price includes design of the system, permitting, marketing, overhead.... etc.... etc... And presumably they are making a profit on your system, or they would be asking for a higher price. On your system, they install one inverter... same as mine (not the same inverter, just the same total install time). So the extra $36,000 they're charging me is for what exactly? Once you are already up on the roof each additional panel you install is not that much additional work. That's where the scalability comes in and it all flows to their pocket -- none to the customer.

The issue is with the soft costs: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/509196/why-solar-installations-cost-more-in-the-us-than-in-germany/ I'm disappointed that Solar City is not using the efficiencies of it's scale to drive down soft costs. If you swallow the argument that the US market for installed residental solar is high fragmented and that Mom-and-Pop installers are inefficient and those high soft costs are holding back more widespread solar adoption... then.... why isn't Solar City using it's economies of scale to bring down the soft costs?

These are the prices Solar City quoted me today. Notice how their prices scale linearly with the size of the system? It's somewhat unbelievable. None of the efficiencies of scale flow to their customers. ****** 5,000 kwh ******* System Cost $25,211 (before rebates and credits) ****** 7,000 kwh ******* System Cost $34,815 (before rebates and credits) ****** 10,000 kwh ******* SYSTEM COST System Cost $50,421 (before rebates and credits)

I recently met another local Dad who went to Harvard and Stanford (our daughters ride horses together). He was econ/business at those schools. In fact, he knows Ben Bernanke because they were down the hall from each other at Harvard. So, I asked him if it were possible to do worse than the market, because the market is efficient. He laughed at that one. Says he had never thought of it like that before.

I remember that he was worried perhaps about all the interest rate derivatives out there. Here is my take... there are people on both side of these derivatives, so a move up could be just as devastating as a move down, in theory. Everyone, all parties, expect that rates could go back to 4%. Just pull up a chart of last few decades history. But very few would have realistically expected rates to go as low as they did over the past few years. Now, if the 10 year falling to 1.5% wasn't expected, and yet everything held together nicely, then I'm not worried about the reverse happening... going back to 4% which nobody thinks is unreasonable.

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/316015-budget-deficit-reaches-606-billion-cbo The federal deficit seems to be shrinking by 368B$ this year and 100B$ of it seems to be unrelated to tax revenue increases. I wonder if the 26% decline (from 52 week high) in the only true money is related directly to that.

And looks like version 5.0 is now out in the wild (screenshots from somebody who has car with the installed updates): In this release they have already released the first fix to the energy loss problem when vehicle is not in use. Plus it looks like some map improvements, WiFi tethering, Tow Mode, Screen Cleaning mode (so you can wipe the touchscreen). The additions to Driver Profiles seems to be tied to the key fob. So for example, if I unlock the car with my key it will adjust the driver's seat to my preferred settings. And if my wife unlocks the car with her key fob (and no, I didn't give her one... just hypothetical of course) then it will adjust the driver's seat to her preferred settings. I haven't played that much with the driver profiles yet, but I think it will even remember your preferred power steering settings (be it "standard" or "sport").

I believe a major contributor to the decline of BAC's stock in summer of 2011 was the plunge in the interest rates that occurred at the same time. The net interest margin compression, loosely translated, shrunk the size of the shovel with which BAC needed to dig itself out of it's real and perceived problems. Higher rates, bigger shovel. Bigger shovel, more resiliency. The higher the earnings power relative to your liabilities, the lower risk. Lower risk, better stock price.

A 4% 10 year wouldn't make the stock go down. It would make it go up. The earnings potential that would unlock is very beneficial. Take the interest rate increase in the most recent quarter -- completely absorbed by earnings. A couple of more quarters like that and we're there, with no net hit to capital. The stock would then price in the better forward earnings, and we'd come out better than if the rate movement had never occurred.

I think that sounds right in the lab but if the earnings are being goosed by the Federal deficit then it may be a long wait. I sort of see them continuing deficits until the consumer is done deleveraging, then as the consumer picks up they can begin to cut back on the deficit. Thus, it might be a very long wait. In the meantime, those $100 range earnings may accumulate for years and years and years. Or might not. Just pointing out that the normalized earnings probably has something to do with fiscal responsibility. I have tried to stay clear of things where I'd be crushed -- I know that around tangible book value BAC is not inflated.

Or they let a good portion of it sit in large, growing cash piles, or pay down debt, instead of investing it. That would lead to poor growth as well. But perhaps whenever that deleveraging subsides, they invest the incoming flows again (or pay it out) and earnings growth picks up.

I know they are not being used for buybacks. I was illustrating that with a 2% dividend you can certainly have a 4% real growth rate in earnings of the S&P500 -- the easiest example for that is the one where the company just retires shares. It's not what they are actually doing, sure, but it's to show that you can perpetually grow at a 4% rate forever without any actual economic growth. Cutting the dividend to 0%, they could grow at 6% just by buying back shares. Instead, they could pay a 6% real dividend yield. But for whatever reason they don't do that. I'm only bringing it up because you're talking about P/E of 11 or something which is an earnings yield of 9% real if inflation is 0%. That is far too low -- you're coming up with an earnings yield that far exceeds 6% real.

Fully understand what you are saying. I was trying to find out if the battery solution was more cost effective. Or at least I wanted to find out how cost effective the battery thing is. Simply getting a price would do the trick. But they don't have any North American salespeople perhaps. I'm wondering if I keep repeatedly trying, one of these days I'll find that they've hired employees to sell their product. Then if they are very responsive and eager to get my business at that point I'll buy the stock. Then in the next quarterly earnings report the stock will soar because suddenly they'll have sales in North America.

The P/E according to this source is 18.62. http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3021-peyield.html That's a 5.37% real earnings yield if the inflation rate is 0%. It's not 6% real yield, but it's close. If the market pulled back 10% then you'd be at roughly 6% real earnings yield. As you point out, the dividend rate is 2%. Well, if the other 2/3 of earnings were spent solely on stock buybacks, then real earnings per share would be growing at a 4% clip. Thus, 6% real returns.

Isnt the earnings yield on the stock (or stock market) the real earnings yield? Earnings yield on the bonds is nominal. Most of the arguments I see aganist the Fed model is related to this. Both Hussman and Cliff Asness have written extensively on this. Vinod A really big issue is that you don't really get to keep a large slice of what they claim they'll pay you on these Treasury bonds. In my case they tell me I've got to give them 40% back. After that 40% is gone, what's the chance of my after-tax returns beating inflation? It's the biggest nonsense around. The very people who claim to give you a return then take it back -- it's the Treasury in both instances! I'm not kidding! The 10 yr yield is really only 1.62% for such people (not the 2.7% that most believe). Stocks have the advantage of getting much of the returns tax-deferred (with all capital gains forgiven upon death). Thus, in the real world the risk premium is much wider between stocks and bonds than most people believe.

I called back and pressed "0" this time to reach an operator. Instead of getting an operator, I got an answering machine with no instructions. It just told me to leave a message. This company is a joke -- you've heard about Bank of America having bad service? Well... move over, we have a new champion.

I called that number. This is humorous. Thank you for calling BYD North America Headquarters. If you know your party's extension, you may enter it at any time. To reach an operator, please stay on the line or press 0. So I stay on the line (my hands are busy chopping veggies in the kitchen and I have the phone on my shoulder). But they must repeat the loop like 6 times or something. Finally they hang up on me. Operator never came on the line.

That's really weird. On the website they list that address as their "Auto" destination (cars presumably). http://www.byd.com/na/service/salesinformation.html And for all the other departments they say you should contact China. And it's funny, the "Autos" for North America is the only department on that sales page that lists a non-Chinese number. They only offer Chinese numbers for Africa, Europe, Australia (and all of North America excluding "Autos").

Start off at their website: www.byd.com Click on "Energy" Then click on "Contact Us -- Sales Information" Then click on "Energy". Then they tell you to basically call China.

Have you tried calling them instead of email? Not yet because who do you call? China? Come on BYD, how about a local number for those of us actually in North America? I'm not kidding, they give you a Chinese phone number for their North American Energy sales: North America-Energy Address:No.3001, Hengping Road, Baolong, Longgang, Shenzhen, 518118, P.R.China Tel: +86-755-8988 8888 | Fax: +86-755-8420 2222 Email: nmd.og@byd.com