Even 20 years is much below what most studies show. Panels tend to keep functioning well beyond 30 years, with degradation at 86%. It might be true that economically in 30 years they're so much cheaper that it's worth replacing them with new panels, but that's an optimisation, not a question of replacement need.
Essentially it's not an isolated market, but part of a bigger whole.
As an example imagine a village that constituted 1% of the population of a country. The village was 100% renewable, and the country was 0% renewable. If the village disconnected its grid, in isolation its prices would be dictated by its renewables. But if its connected, its renewables just get traded on a market with marginal prices. If a person elsewhere in the country has more expensive generation, they'll but your cheap renewables at their price level. Thus the village will experience high prices like everyone else.
Now suppose Germany is that village in an interconnected EU market. Of course the numbers from my example are exaggerated, but the point remains: Germany's renewables aren't enough, if pricing is set at a much larger market, with fewer renewables.
Today about 20% of Germany's electricity was exported. While only about 6% of its demand came from gas. In other words if Germany was disconnected, it'd have needed no gas, and thus prices would've been lower.
Of course disconnecting isn't a good idea for other reasons, as on other days Germany imports. And Germany's ability to export its renewable excess generates significant revenues, creates incentives to build more renewables, and offsets emissions and pollution in other countries, too.
But long story short, it'll take more for one part of the whole to go renewable. As the EU is generally transitioning towards renewables we see a decoupling happen.
It's true that even 2% of usage being gas, means 100% of the demand pays the gas price.
But (!) that's only true for the spot market at that particular point in the day. And that changes all the time.
Example: if you use zero gas for 80% of the day, and use just 10% gas for remaining 20% of the day, then that day gas was just 2% of total demand, like we said earlier. But it's not true that gas prices dictated 100% of the price that day.
After all, gas prices dictated only 20% of the day's prices. The remaining part of the day there was no gas demand, and thus it did not dictate the price. And that happens more and more often.
The more renewables + storage are built out, the more time of the day that gas is displaced, not used and thus not part of the price mechanism.
Second, if the market pays at the gas price, the renewables reap all the profits (because their costs are far below the gas price). This incentivizes further renewable capacity build-out, eventually displacing gas entirely. This incentive structure pushes the market the fastest towards lowest-cost generation, which is renewable nowadays.
It's not overpriced. If it was, the grid operator would be raking in massive profits because they're selling way above cost. In reality grid operators have small margins, this indicates there is no overpricing.
Do you get paid less for power fed to the grid than power sold at retail? Yes. Because they're different things. You get say 5 cents for a kWh fed back to the grid, while you pay more like 25c. But guess what? Wholesalers also get 5 cents to sell to the grid. It's just that there's an additional 20 cents in grid operation and taxes for a retail price.
Taxes you can't avoid, it's not a 'scam'. It's money you pay that goes into public funds and returns to the public, and is spent by people you can vote to elect to represent you.
Grid costs also aren't a scam, they're just a cost of doing business. Again, profit margins are small, so they're pricing based on cost, not based on scam.
And it's all entirely optional. You can just install batteries yourself. You can do whatever you want. You don't have to use the grid. But surprise surprise, there's no reason to think that a small network is on average cheaper than a big network. The bigger the network the easier it is to share storage capacity and offload excesses from one place to another. It's the reason most states and countries try to build interconnectors to even build international grids, and why islands like Cyprus that don't interconnect and have small markets have the highest electricity prices. It's why anyone who builds a home and has the choice to connect to an available grid or not, does so. And why land and homes in locations without grid-access are valued less, because they're more expensive to set-up.
The cost of a nationwide grid is significant. Depending on the terrain and population density, it usually nets out at somewhere between 30%-50% the overall cost of electricity. Sure, if you run a microgrid among a few houses, you won't pay those costs, but someone has to pay the cost to maintain the km of lines to reach deep into the mountains of Bavaria.
Microgrids also have some black swan events that can result in outage; if you are reliant on solar and storage but then experience a 7-day long period of stormy weather and no production. As you note, off-grid is always an option, and when you seriously look into it, you quickly find that costs to have that 24/7/365 service are many times more than just paying to connect to the grid.
At least in the us - the only way a utility can really make more money is by spending more money (as they get a return from the utility commission on a vested capital - massive oversimplification) but it means utilities are not incentivized to spend less rather than more…
Same in Australia, after they were corporatised (turned into companies run for profit rather than run as a service by some level of government) it was recognised that as natural monopolies there would need to be some sort of regulation on how much money they could recover, it was decided a method based on their costs was best, so they spent bad money agter good im expanding the network hugely (based on crazy projections of growth in demand to nowhere) rather than building resilience into the network and lowering their costs.
And that’s not even the cost of marketisation, that’s just the regulated network costs.
The government employees who approve or deny the utility’s priced have an incentive to not approve higher prices. Their bosses are usually elected, and higher utility prices are very unpopular.
I was told by a former southern company exec that the McKinsey did a study for them and their largest competitive advantage was regulatory capture in the states in which they operate - unfortunately I think the politicians are more beholden to the utilities than their constituents..
And winning athletes and sports teams don't go to the white house due to 'scheduling conflicts'. And Amazon paid $75m for a Melania documentary because they saw real profit and need there. And Qatar bought Trump an airplane because it was important for his work. And everyone nominates him for a nobel prize because he ends wars and doesn't get into wars (we're just in a special military operation atm).
Also anecdotal evidence, I haven't been sick this whole past 12 months. Any change I made in the past 12 I could've contributed to this. Nothing particular comes to mind but there were lots of changes (e.g. work, home, diet). That's the issue.
You'd have to stop sauna for a while and see if it reverses to strengthen the anecdotal case I guess.
I think Musk definitely financed many of his ventures on his personal brand. The amount of capital he could raise because of his public persona as some kind of Tony Stark, made all the difference.
Same for Andreessen, a VC's success is built on his ability to raise capital and pick winners. His whole strategy, like Musk, was also on building a public persona to raise capital and get people to believe in his picks.
The question is what you think now of their old opinions. If you think the same, they have changed. If you think differently, you have changed.
If I look at Elon and Marc's interviews from 10-15 years ago I am still roughly 80% in agreement, 20% disagreement. I feel the same about what they used to say today, as I did back then.
Now I'm 20% in agreement (they definitely still have interesting thoughts) and 80% absolutely disgusted (with both, but particularly Musk).
> Now I'm 20% in agreement (they definitely still have interesting thoughts) and 80% absolutely disgusted (with both, but particularly Musk).
> So I genuinely think they changed in this regard
Everyone has changed. You, me, Musk, Andreesen. But in that time, the disparity between them and "us" in wealth and even more importantly, political power, has ballooned. Their increasing power has fueled their sense of infallibility and inevitability.
It's not yet clear what these changes will engender in us. We are more numerous and divergent in perspectives and interests.
But it's actual revenue was $10b in 2025 on 9m customers, so he's pretty much correct.
The point I have more issue with is that a 60 or 100 PE ratio only makes sense in a high-growth scenario. Telecoms are valued at 9x by comparison. 60 or 100 only makes sense if you expect it to grow by 10x from here, and face no competition and keep prices this high.
And that seems like a bit of a reach. The richest people on the planet live in urban environments in US/EU/Asia, with fast and widespread 5G.
Yes, rich people on boats in the pacific, hiking remote mountains, and researchers in Antartica exist, but they're not a market of 200 million people. And even if you get there, that's still just 120b, not 380b valuation.
1. Tesla was priced at $2.5b end of 2010.
2. Tesla started production that year of the model S, with nearly 500km range and 0-100 in 4.4 seconds, still competitive 16 years later. It was an obvious disruption of a proven market.
3. that car market was valued at half a trillion at the time.
So Tesla being valued at 0.5% of the market, with disruptive technology, seems fine. Of course it was a moonshot, but hindsight is 20/20.
But what is the total market here that it's stepping into? Seems like SpaceX is servicing the majority of the market for years, yet it just has 16 billion revenue. How that gets you to 1.75 trillion, I don't know.
Inverters a different story.
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