Stop Exporting Jobs....to Texas

GAF shingles

We first became aware of solar shingles (not solar panels) when we visited a Tesla showroom in 2017.

Tesla’s basic premise is to make solar ownership more attractive and affordable by eliminating the need to install both a roof and solar panels. Tesla says it will manage the entire process of solar roof installation, including removal of existing roofs, design, permits, installation, and maintenance. The company estimates that each installation will take about a week.

We will seriously consider installing solar shingles when it comes time to replace our 30-year-old roof. Tesla isn't the only vendor, of course, which is why it's disappointing that one of its competitors is moving its headquarters from San Jose to Texas.

GAF Energy, which sells solar panels embedded in roof shingles, will shut down its San Jose headquarters on Dec. 13, it announced in a Thursday WARN document, filed with California officials. The company uses the facility for researching, developing and manufacturing its solar shingles — a whole green energy factory at San Jose’s southeastern corner, operational since 2021. But now, GAF Energy will lay off local workers and shift its official headquarters to Georgetown, Texas...

Compared with California, Texas is building housing at a rapid rate, potentially making the state a more appealing market for a solar provider like GAF Energy that aims to grab customers as they’re adding or replacing a roof. A Realtor.com report from February — published alongside that company’s move to Texas — said the Lone Star State accounted for 15% of the country’s new house permits in 2024.

California's exodus of large companies (Tesla, Oracle, HP) gets the publicity, but the loss of hundreds of smaller businesses is damaging, especially since smaller companies are the engines of future growth.

It's discouraging that we will have to buy a newish technology from a company in Texas instead of from the state that invented it.

Low-cost Solar Power That Increases the Supply of Fresh Water

Solar panels over 115-foot-wide canal in Hickman, CA (SFGate)

Three years ago we posted about a creative concept for green energy production:

Putting solar panels over California's aqueducts will reduce evaporation and generate green energy.

The California Department of Water Resources is funding the $20 million pilot program with the intention of learning where solar panels might be viable along the state’s 4,000 miles of canals and aqueducts.

In 2025 the program has begun implementation: [bold added]

Near Hickman, California, just outside Modesto, a 110-foot-wide grid of solar panels now tops a section of canal, arching over the gently flowing water. Solar projects have long been a crucial piece of the state’s movement to clean energy, and these panels are part of a new project that’s hoping to do far more than just generate electricity. Dubbed Project Nexus, the $20 million state-funded initiative hopes to better understand whether these installations can be an even more efficient approach to solar energy.

The waterways already irrigate much of the state’s crops, but now they will also cool the solar panels, just by nature of being underneath them, increasing the panels’ efficiency. Meanwhile, the panels will shade the canals, reducing evaporation and suppressing aquatic weeds. Between this installation and a 20-foot-wide section that was completed on another part of the canal in March, the project could generate a total energy output of 1.6 megawatts while producing a host of other benefits.

We seem to have lost the societal vigor to replicate the vast infrastructure projects of the 20th century--the dams, aqueducts, highways, power generation and transportation systems--that elevated the standard of living for every American. However, nothing should stop us from the more modest ambition of improving sections of that infrastructure when opportunities present themselves.

In the Furtherance of Their Own Goals

(Sarah Stierch via Flickr CC 2.0/SFGate)

The war against CO2 claims another sacrifice: 2,554 acres in the Mojave Desert plus the character of the nearby town of Boron (pop.2000). From SFGate reporter Sam Mauhay-Moore: [bold added]

On a warm October night last fall, I sat near a taxidermied bobcat and a trove of other historical Mojave memorabilia inside Boron’s treasured Twenty Mule Team Museum. A group of locals gathered there to discuss the Aratina Solar Project, which was just starting to make headway less than a mile from the town’s southern boundary.

“They’re just destroying this place,” Jerry Gallegos, longtime Boron resident and co-president of the museum, said at the meeting. “They’re plowing down 3,000 Joshua trees right now, taking chainsaws and cutting them down three at a time.”

Joshua tree in the Mojave (drcooke/Getty/SFGate)

The Aratina Solar Project has a footprint of 2,554 acres, of which 2,317 acres will be covered by solar panels. It "generate(s) up to 530 megawatt-alternating current (MW-AC) of renewable energy, including up to 600 megawatts of energy storage, on privately-owned land in unincorporated Kern County."

Fortunately there is a natural-gas power plant of similar capacity in Kern County that can be used for comparison.

The Elk Hills Power Plant (EHPP) is located on a 12-acre site within the Elk Hills Oil and Gas Field, in western Kern County, near the community of Tupman...EHPP is a nominal 550-megawatt (MW) combined-cycle, natural gas-fired, cogeneration power generating plant.

It's well beyond the scope of this post to rehash the traditional natural-gas vs. solar debate (carbon emissions vs. none, power-as-needed vs. intermittent capability). But we can note a vast difference that has not often been mentioned, namely, solar's 4-sq-mile destruction of the Mojave desert vs. less than 1/2 of one percent of that area for natural-gas power.

It would be wrong to declare that environmentalists are guilty of an apparent double standard when they are silent about natural habitats being destroyed in the furtherance of their own goals. They must have a good explanation.

(Much) Higher Cost to Repair EVs

Saving the planet is expensive (WSJ illustration)

When weighing the advantages and disadvantages of electric vehicles, one should include the much higher cost of their repair: [bold added]

For EVs, repairs following a collision can cost thousands of dollars more than their gas-powered counterparts, because the fixes tend to require more replacement parts, the vehicles are more complicated and fewer people do such repairs...

Last year, repairing an EV after a crash cost an average $6,587 compared with $4,215 for all vehicles, according to CCC Intelligent Solutions, a company that processes insurance claims for auto repairs in the U.S....

Higher repair costs are also helping to drive up insurance premiums for electric owners, who pay on average $357 a month for coverage compared with $248 for gas vehicle owners, according to insurance comparison website Insurify.

Here are more specifics about why EVs cost more to repair (and insure):

Part of that cost can be the greater work involved: over three mechanical labor hours on average for a repairable EV claim estimate, versus less than two for ICE vehicles, according to Mitchell data. Mechanics sometimes have to de-energize electric vehicles before removing their high-voltage batteries to avoid damaging them during repairs, Mitchell said...

One complication is the trend toward “gigacasting”—using smaller numbers of larger cast parts to make vehicles. Tesla has championed the technology, and others, including Toyota, are now following. But it could make cars even more expensive to repair. If lower production costs mean higher insurance costs, then drivers won’t actually save money.

Higher insurance and repair costs reinforce last year's decision not to be in a hurry to buy an electric vehicle.

We will first need to replace our 20-year-old roof and install a solar panel/battery storage system to defray the EV recharging cost, so at the earliest it's three years away.

Solar Canals: A Great Idea with a Health Caveat

"Solar canals" in India

The benefits sound compelling. Putting solar panels over California's aqueducts will reduce evaporation and generate green energy.

The California Department of Water Resources is funding the $20 million pilot program with the intention of learning where solar panels might be viable along the state’s 4,000 miles of canals and aqueducts...

The [UC Merced / UC Santa Cruz] study detailed other benefits, too. Vast tracts of pricey new land wouldn’t be needed to generate solar energy, minimizing debate over the conversion of farmland or pristine desert for throngs of arrays. The solar panels on the canals also would operate more efficiently because the water would keep them cool.

A caveat from history: to help the environment California tends to go all-in on solutions that are not only costly but end up creating environmental damage worse than the original problem.

Case in point: MTBE. California imposed stricter requirements for oxygenated gasoline than set forth in the 1990 Federal Clean Air Act. Refiners added MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether) to gasoline, which was found to be highly toxic when it leaked from tanks into the water supply. IMHO, most people would rather take their chances with smog than drink water that may have been poisoned.

Now back to the subject at hand. Solar panels contain toxic materials, e.g., lead and cadmium, that make them difficult to dispose of properly. If California covers its 4,000 miles of canals with solar arrays, surely there will be some leakage, if not breakage that could jeopardize the water supply.

I just hope that California tests the concept thoroughly before it goes big.

San Francisco: Where Bureaucracy Reigns Supreme

Tesla's Powerwall battery.

When we visited the Tesla dealership in 2017, I saw our path to going green.

During the day rooftop solar panels would produce excess power. The power would not be sold to PG&E (and repurchased that evening) but would be stored in batteries in our garage, where our Tesla EV would be charging at night time. An added benefit is that we would be independent of unreliable brown-out prone PG&E.

The dream would wait, as solar and battery technologies were improving rapidly. Besides we had a fairly new natural-gas water heater and furnace that were reliable and inexpensive to operate. Their useful lives would expire in the mid-2020's, which would be a good time to execute the solar panel==>battery==>EV vision.

But if we lived in San Francisco, one of the greenest cities in America, the dream would be impossible. [bold added]

San Francisco needs power when the fog comes out and after the sun sets. Meeting that demand without fossil fuels will be impossible if we don’t start storing our solar energy for off-hours use.

And yet for the past three years in San Francisco, it has been illegal to install a battery storage system over 20-kilowatt hours on a one- or two-family home. For context, that’s not even enough to power a 2013 Nissan Leaf, one of the smallest electric cars on the market.

San Francisco's fire-safety concerns over battery storage are "unproven" and not subscribed to by any other Bay Area city. They're emblematic of a City bureaucracy that prevents its own citizens from doing the very things that City leadership advocates.

Meanwhile, San Francisco faces a budget deficit of $200 million in the next fiscal year and is looking for places to cut.

Wet Blanket

Drying a wet blanket in the hot Hawaiian sun saves money on dryer expenses and is environmentally virtuous. (We noted the benefit of using clotheslines ten years ago and again in 2017.)

In enlightened California drying clothes in the sun has not been widely accepted. For example a homeowners association in a new development near Sacramento explicitly forbids clotheslines in its bylaws:

Sure, make people turn off their air conditioners and suffer in the heat, ban cheap, sturdy, moisture-proof plastic bags in favor of unsanitary reusable containers, but clotheslines? They make Californians look lower-class, even Third-Worldish.

Hawaii is far from perfect, but here appearances matter much less. Hang 'em high.

Buying and Holding Does Not Mean Sleeping

Chevron (CVX): bought at $84.83 on 8/21/20, sold at $94.80 on 1/19/21.

Your humble blogger hasn't visited a casino in a couple of years and scratches that gambling itch by dabbling in short-term trades.The record is mixed and ST trading can't be relied upon as a source of income. The long-term approach is buy-and-hold for 95% of the portfolio and has worked much better.

Last summer the recession wrecked the fossil-fuels industry. The large oils, e.g., Exxon and Chevron, fell to less than 50% of their two-year highs. They became attractive investments, as their dividend yield was near double digits and provided protection against further drastic declines. Also, I guessed that the switch to alternative energy would occur more slowly than the optimists predicted and that when the world economy came back these stocks would show healthy gains.

I bought Chevron (CVX) as it climbed back to $84.83 on August 21st and watched bemusedly as it fell nearly 20% over the next couple of months (the $1.29 quarterly dividend provided a smidgeon of comfort with its 6% annualized yield).

When CVX rose after the November election, I felt some measure of vindication and planned to hold it for a couple of years at least. The economy will come back eventually, fossil fuel usage--probably not coal--will surge, and Chevron, Exxon, Schlumberger, Occidental, Apache, etc. should all be good investments.

Recently there has been a spate of good news about battery technology, which is bad news for the fossil fuel industry.

Tesla announces ‘tabless’ battery cells that will improve range of its electric cars

Inexpensive battery charges rapidly for electric vehicles, reduces range anxiety

Range anxiety, the fear of running out of power before being able to recharge an electric vehicle, may be a thing of the past, according to a team of Penn State engineers who are looking at lithium iron phosphate batteries that have a range of 250 miles with the ability to charge in 10 minutes...The researchers also say that the battery should be good for 2 million miles in its lifetime.

If I had to guess, I think Chevron still has room to run. But there's no sense being a hog. I took my 14.8% profit (gain plus dividends) over 5 months (35% annualized) and got out.

Even if you're buying and holding, you have to check your assumptions occasionally.

Glimmer of Green

Inoperative Tesla charging station in Napa (Chron photo)

During yesterday's electricity shutdown, conservative websites chuckled about expensive, idle Teslas that weren't able to recharge.

As we've noted before, if you're going with alternative energy, go all in. Vertically integrate an electric car with solar panels and a storage system.

What many neglect to include is the latter. Rather than purchase electricity high from fickle PG&E during the night and sell it low to them during the day, for us it's essential to find a storage solution, typically a battery.

2017: independence means buying two.

With car, battery, and panels, one can be completely independent of PG&E. The economics of this solar triad weren't appealing when we first looked at Tesla's PowerWall in 2017. The costs may still be higher than we want to pay, but does the concept work?

Headline: Tesla owners weather PG&E’s power outage as gas stations across CA shut down. The headline doesn't tell the complete story: [bold added]

Amidst the chaos surrounding the state, Tesla owners who purchased a Powerwall 2 battery with rooftop solar systems have reported that they are barely feeling the effects of the ongoing outage. Mark Flocco, a homeowner who acquired two Powerwalls for his home, noted in a Twitter post that his battery units have been powering his house with no issues since the outages started.

Considering that there seems to be enough sun in CA these days, Flocco noted in a follow-up post that his two Powerwalls haven’t dipped below 68% before the next day begins and they can start getting power from the sun again. Thus, for now, the Powerwall 2 owner’s home could remain powered indefinitely, or at least until the days start getting shorter...

Tesla’s electric car and energy storage business is designed to promote an ecosystem that allows customers to achieve energy independence from the grid. By using the company’s electric cars together with its solar panels and home batteries, owners could essentially power their vehicles and houses with the sun. This, ultimately, is Tesla’s endgame, and if the performance of Powerwall 2 batteries and solar panels in PG&E’s current outage is any indication, a good number of homeowners might very well end up purchasing batteries and solar systems for their houses after this incident.

At the time we roughed out the cost, installation of two PowerWall batteries and Tesla's panels (really energy-collecting shingles) would have totaled around $40,000. When one adds the car, we're talking six figures.

With technology improving and costs coming down each year, the question for us is when, not if.

We may not be "green" in the ideological sense, but we are finally seeing a glimmer of green in a switch to alternative energy.

Do As I Say

Cottons dried in a couple of hours in the Hawaiian sun.

In 2011 we were hopeful that the green elite would eventually embrace carbon-saving measures like drying laundry on clotheslines or forsaking non-business jet travel, but six years later we remain perplexed at the slow adoption of carbon-saving actions by these progressive leaders.

In the tony Bay Area, homeowners’ associations, which dominate new construction, continue to ban clothes lines.

If we didn’t know better, we would think that elites rather talk about virtue rather than act with virtue. They don't want to do good if it means looking bad.

Rules of a Peninsula homeowners' association.

In Hawaii, as home prices escalate and wealthy newcomers move in to neighborhoods, we are pleased to confirm that residents continue not to be embarrassed about hanging their laundry outside. It’s a small step toward saving the planet, yet it’s a step that seems to be too much for the much wealthier Bay Area to allow, if not encourage.

Over My Head

The solar-panel and battery system that we saw in last week's visit to the Tesla showroom was intriguing. But the disruptive product just may be Tesla's solar roof.

Replacing a conventional roof can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Tesla's solar-roof tiles cost about the same as conventional tiles (see Bloomberg chart above), so why not get "free" solar energy if you are going to replace the roof anyway?

Tesla’s basic premise is to make solar ownership more attractive and affordable by eliminating the need to install both a roof and solar panels. Tesla says it will manage the entire process of solar roof installation, including removal of existing roofs, design, permits, installation, and maintenance. The company estimates that each installation will take about a week.

How Elon Musk keeps coming up with these ideas---and executing them---is over my head.

The tiles look attractive (CNet image)

Much Narrower Than It Used to Be

If you want energy independence, buy two.

On the way to the Stanford Apple Store we stopped by the Tesla showroom, which had a steady stream of curious passersby. Everyone else looked at the cars, but I was interested in the Powerwall. Had consumer-level battery storage progressed to the point where solar-energy owners could be off the grid? (Normally excess electricity is "sold" to the utility during the day and is "bought back" at night. Capacious batteries would greatly reduce or even eliminate this relationship with the utility.)

I had phrased my question poorly. Tom, the Tesla salesperson, explained that while every home is legally required to maintain a connection with PG&E, two battery banks are sufficient not to have to draw electricity at night. Two Powerwalls installed would cost about $15,000, and a solar-panel system, as quoted by Tesla's competitors will run $20,000. Spending $35,000 when our electricity bill is about $2,000 per year doesn't make much sense, but the decision is much narrower than it used to be. Besides, showing off signaling virtue to neighbors doesn't come cheap.

Neglecting the Basics

The Third World struggles to meet rising electricity demand (yesterday's post), but the First World can't always keep the lights on either.

Massive power outage hits San Francisco, shuts down businesses, BART station, cable cars, traffic lights:

A spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said 88,000 customers lost power and that there had been a fire at a substation at Larkin and Eddy streets. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the fire caused the outage, which swept through the city about 9 a.m., or was ignited as a result of the outage.

At noon, PG&E officials said crews were still working on the problem — and estimated that most customers would have their power restored by 1 p.m. Power was back on for about 10,000 customers at 11:45 a.m.

Most news outlets are saying the outage was due to the power station fire and/or circuit breakers being tripped:



Northern California companies are developing rockets, artificial intelligence, robots, self-driving cars, and virtual reality while the basic infrastructure is crumbling. (I do intend to look at solar energy for ourselves, not because it helps with global warming but because I'll be less dependent on the grid.)

[Update from KRON, Channel 4 news:

As of 1:30 p.m., power has been restored to 15,000 people in the city.

Power has since been restored to Montgomery Station thanks to a backup generator.

Service for the city’s cable car lines was also halted, and no estimation was given for a time of resumption.]

21st Century Imperialism

Matla Coal-Fired Power Station, South Africa

The quickest means to African development is through the use of coal-fired power plants: [bold added]

African nations have an estimated 35 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves that could supply the continent’s current needs for more than a century.

Solar power has several drawbacks:

Unreliability: “People think of this continent as jungle and sunshine, but we have a long rainy season in the tropics, more like a monsoon, and there’s no sun for days,” [Engineer John] Owusu said. “That makes it hard to rely on something like solar. Wind turbines make more sense, but you still need batteries to store the power.”

Theft: "on a continent where a third of the population lives under the official U.N. poverty line, solar power users need to hire armed guards to prevent the coveted panels from being stolen."

Your humble blogger believes that each country gets to decide what energy path is best for itself. When rich, white societies try to keep poor black countries impoverished, that used to be called racism and imperialism.

Heat and Light Out West

The Washington Post's new logo: "Democracy dies in darkness"

California can be the Post-er child. Our great Progressive democracy is converting as fast as it can to solar energy to keep the lights on.

When there are weeks of stormy weather--which officials thought will never happen again [note: California has failed to maintain levees and dams--the Federal ones are in decent shape] because of global warming--they will, in the dark, do the facepalm, just like when they forced Californians to throw out old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs. Oops, so CFLs poison the surroundings with mercury. They meant well.

Did you know that backup generators are getting cheaper, lighter, and more efficient?

Kerouac Would Approve

(Ars technica image)

In news that you may have missed, the village of Tourouvre au Perche in Normandy, France has opened a 1-kilometer (0.6 mile) "solar road" built out of solar panels:

The roadway is just one kilometre (0.6mi) long, but that still works out at 2,800 square metres of photovoltaic cells—enough, hopefully, to power the village's street lights.

At a cost of €5 million (currently US $5.3 million), the uneconomical "Wattway" is a demonstration project:

There will now be a two-year test period, to see if Wattway can withstand the rigour of being pounded by thousands of cars and trucks per day, and whether it can actually provide a useful amount of electricity.

Usefulness aside, the main problem with constructing solar roads is their crippling cost. One of the main selling points of Wattway, according to Colas, is that each panel is just a few millimetres thick, and can thus be installed on top of an existing road, which in turn massively reduces construction costs. Having said that, the 1km road in Normandy cost €5 million (£4.3m) to build. And that's for a single lane of a two-lane highway!

There are clearly engineering obstacles--not only the vehicular pounding but also problems that are foreseeable with solar energy, such as dirt, snow, and other sunblocking materials and cloudy weather--but we applaud the experiment.

Low Energy Investments

Solar-energy-company Solyndra's (2011 photo) bankruptcy
cost VCs and taxpayers over $500 million. The facility
is now occupied by Seagate, the data storage company.

Clean-energy investments have been a disaster for venture capitalists:

Venture-capital investors lost more than half of the $25 billion they pumped into clean-energy technology startups from 2006 to 2011.

The reasons: [bold added]

These investments were illiquid. They would tie up capital for much longer than the three- to five-year time horizon that VCs preferred.

It also takes a lot of money to get fundamental science right and to scale it up. Building extensive factories and building demonstration projects to scale, those were not activities that VCs ended up being willing to fund at the hundreds of millions of dollars level.

Third, energy companies or clean-tech companies were going into markets that are legacy industries, for which a product already exists that does a pretty good job. So when you’re a solar-panel company competing with cheap electricity from natural gas, you don’t have the benefits of high margins. You instead have to compete at the razor-thin margins of the commodity markets.

And finally, the fourth reason we found was that the valuation premium that companies might receive upon exit, even if they were successful, simply was not high enough to justify the investment put into them. [blogger's note: IPO's and/or selling to Big Energy wouldn't have been at ridiculous earnings multiples.]

Other reasons, IMHO, are: the lack of dependable regulatory support (alternative energy subsidies and taxes on carbon) and the fracking revolution that blew a hole in OPEC's oil price umbrella. Some day a technology like hydrogen fusion will be perfected, and the world's capital (and concomitant returns) will beat a path to its door. But that day is not today.

Let the Donald Be Your Guide

I've been getting a lot of calls on the landline from local numbers that I don't recognize. They don't leave messages, a sure sign that the calls are from telemarketers.

This morning I had to answer the phone because I'm expecting a call from a contractor.

"Good morning, sir. We're contacting utility customers. How are you this morning?"

Uh-oh. Another sales call. Fine.

"Would you like to save over $70 a month on your utility bill?"

I need the landline open. I'm not interested in solar. I've already talked to a number of salesmen, if that's what you're selling.

"OK, thank you."

I wasn't rude, but directness saved both of us time. The Donald is showing us the way.

(Business Insider image)

Rail Power

For years we've been pestered by door-to-door salespeople who are trying to push solar panels. Though we've given a couple of them extended hearings (some of the products are financially complex--certainly worthy of a separate post), we have declined for two principal reasons:

1) the technology is improving rapidly, and we would hate to have buyer's remorse in a few years;

2) storage (i.e., battery) solutions haven't gotten to the point where we could be completely off the grid; one of our goals is to be independent of PG&E.

Energy storage is a problem faced by alternative energy systems. The wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine, and both wind and solar

require extra, large-scale infrastructure to store the energy so that it is available on demand and not just when it’s windy or sunny.

Ingenious energy storage solutions often involve gravity: water is pumped uphill using solar energy during the day, for example, then rotates turbines as it runs downhill during the night. But water is not always available or suitable.

ARES: don't call it Sisyphus

Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES) has designed an ingenious energy-transfer system involving railcars that are carrying rocks:

The rocks stand in for the water in a pumped-storage system. They are carried up- and downhill by a train that is thus the equivalent of the turbines.....The hill ARES has chosen has a gradient of about 8%. The track itself is just under 9km (about 5½ miles) long. The company estimates that its proposed system will be able to store 12.5 MWh of energy, and deliver it back to the grid at a rate of up to 50MW.

Storage technology will undoubtedly improve, but probably not to the point where weights could be deposited on my roof during the day, then lowered during the evening. Besides, the neighbors will complain.

Right Man, Wrong Reason

Earlier this week we opined that Tesla's bid to acquire SolarCity made Elon Musk look more like money-grubbing capitalist than eco-visionary.

Post-announcement trading in both TSLA and SCTY indicates that the market agrees. [bold added]

Musk said the deal was about the “blindingly obvious” synergies of one-stop shopping for a Tesla electric car, a home battery pack, and SolarCity rooftop panels.

Nearsighted investors didn’t see those synergies. Instead, they saw two unprofitable companies aligning behind the name with the better cost of capital, so they can raise the billions they need to achieve Musk’s bold ambitions. By week’s end, Tesla shares (ticker: TSLA) were 12% lower, at $193.15, trimming the announced value of Tesla’s all-stock offer accordingly. More embarrassing for the entrepreneur, SolarCity stock (SCTY) closed Friday at $22.20, two bucks under the $24-to-$25 value of Tesla’s offer. That means investors doubt Musk can swing the deal, even though he chairs both companies and owns about a quarter of each.

Of all the celebrity CEO's in the Bay Area, Elon Musk , we said last year, was the one to watch, but not for the reasons we are watching him this week.