Yeah, its not like solar, wind, and micro hydro ever use DC->ac converters, and transformers.

The batteries with thermal management and electronics? Yes.
The cells? Nope.

Giga-factory is no more panasonic than tesla belongs to Mercedes and Toyota. It belongs mostly to Musk/Tesla. In addition, it is vastly re-engineered from what panasonic runs. With this factory, they will more than double the world's production of lithium batteries, while using less than 1/10 of the labor that panasonic does.

So few ppl understand Musk, but his real claim to fame is NOT simple engineering. It is Industrial engineering. In all aspects he is looking at the economics of how this works. For example, SpaceX F9 is mostly cheap because of 10 engines all the same. In addition, how their bell is manufactured is a fraction of what other's costs.
Tesla is the same way.
And solar city will be either buying an American solar panel company, OR will build their own in the states, within 2 years.

yes, but, considering that if you do not use the electricity, the excess is bought by the electric company means that you have deal.

That payback depends on where you live and how much you use. Personally, we are fine with it. In fact, we will likely buy it out in 4.5 years.

Actually, we have solar city on our roof, and we love it. Other than summer, we pay just around 90 for our electricity. BUT, in the summer, we have $200-250 electric bills for 3-4 months depending on heat, etc. With the solar, we pay 100/month. Period. In addition, in jan, we were at about the right amount, but in feb, we sold 244 KWH back to Xcel. For march, it appears that we will sell back some 500-600 KWH.
Now, to be fair, we had in-laws here all last year, and they gone. In addition, I replaced nearly all of our incadescents and CFL with cree LEDs.
As such, our bill is down quite a bit. BUT, within another year, we will have a tesla. At that time, we will still very likely be paying 100/month.
Finally, when the tesla comes, we will pull 3 circuits from the box and put them in a different box, and then power these via solar/battery when our power goes out (and it does).

So, you may not like them, but it is working great for us.

Hmmm. I think I should have worded this differently. The idea is that the company like filbe does the R&D, engineering, etc work, BUT, the final construction of it goes to either GA or B&W. With this approach, it is one line of computers, one line of generators, one line of cooling, etc. that are fully debugged. The only real difference would be the reactors.
But, yeah, I agree with you on having them do the work. I will say that GA already has done throium and does NOT want to kill. Look up ft. st. vrain.

Actually, we have built gen IV reactors. Just not in many decades (sad).
BUT, the thorium reactors will take time. I just wish that B&W or GA would take this on, if the feds fund it.
Sadly, between the GOP pushing fossil fuel and the dems fighting nukes, I suspect that we will get nowhere fast.

Actually, mPower will be installed by 2020. My guess is that if we helped them along, they could be ready within 3-4 years.

What I would really like to see happen is for us to provide some grant money to build thorium at GA or mPower. Then simply require that they have similar control rooms, generators, etc. That will make it easier for training, etc.

As to issues such as having a design flaw, by getting 2 very different reactor types, we solve that. In fact, ideally, we would put BOTH reactors on the same site so that at most only one type needs to be taken down. In addition, the thorium reactor can burn up the 'waste' from the mPower unit.

So, which do you work for: NSA? Russia? China? MS?

Seriously, they would be better off with new reactors that can be built in a factory, installed quickly, can up their current stash of waste, and is much cheaper than dealing with these old unique reactors.

Why continue this while selling motorola?

LOL. Yeah, typing that in quickly on a droid can be difficult.

LOL. Yeah, the Model S is superior to the MB S-class W222 4-door that still costs more. The base on the S-class is 95K. The upper end of the Model S is 100K. And the base of W222 is very spartan and more like a GM or a VW. The Model S is faster, holds more ppl and cargo, has cheap re-fuels, and if you are in a real hurry to fill up, you will, within a year, be able to swap the battery out for one that holds enough power to run you 450+ MPC.

If you are a civilian that is close to an area, you should feel better. Less chance of civilian casualty.