240: Secret Solar - The Next Big Solar Tech is Already Here

[Music] on today's episode of still to be determined we're talking about a secret solar project hi everybody Welcome to still to be determined I'm Sean frell I'm a writer I write some sci-fi I write some stuff for kids and I'm just generally curious about technology and luckily for me my brother is that Matt from undecided with Matt frell which takes a look at emerging Tech and its impact on our lives and today we're going to be talking about Matt's most recent episode which talks about a solar technology that is flown under the radar but it may be getting to the spotlight before we get into that Matt how are you doing I'm doing well I'm still nerding out crunching numbers my spreadsheets Sean that's still continuing um also a little bit of a update that I just got uh over the last week this has come up a few times people have asked me how's the Yoshino solid state battery follow up investigation going I was just going to ask you about that too it feels like a hostage situation yes it is going um it's going very slow and part of the reason it's going slow is um the the the testing that my friends group is doing at the University of bath has taken longer than expected and it's partly because some of the guys that are doing it are like PhD students and it's like uh they're working on their thesis so it's like they had to like we had to paus because I had to spend two weeks finishing up my thesis and then I turned the thesis in now I can go back to testing it so there's like these things that have been happening that have slowed them down but the last word I got was they should be done with the testing I think it was the end of last week I haven't heard word yet but like I'm hoping this week I'll get the final word from them and then I can do the final follow-up I'll have with Yoshino and Tech insights which is the other group that did testing that those follow-ups will not take long so I'm hoping I can have a final follow-up video kind of put together a few weeks within it after that so it's probably still a month away but this it's one of those it takes the time it takes it's like I'm not going to rush this out and I know people some people are eager to hear what I found right um but I want to make sure I get it right and I want to make sure I'm getting not just like double checking I want to triple check everything so I want to make sure everything's buttoned up for the followup video so unless there's a delay you're thinking before the end of the year oh it'll be out before the end of the year yes yes I would hope to get out November if it's not November it would probably be the very beginning of December so it's like it will be out before the end of the year on now to our conversation that we usually start off with focused on our previous episode this would be about episode 239 in which we were talking about wind turbines yes yet again promise there's solar panels are coming in this discussion but right now it's back to wind turbines start off with this one from Mark Loveless who said I am so looking forward to Matt nerding out on the second Nerd video or I mean the second one year later video of course he's talking about the one year in Matt's home and Matt I not to disappoint Mark too much I can't imagine you doing another year another follow-up video like what was the second year like year three here we go I I did that on my previous house like two years with solar three years with solar I don't think I need to repeat that this will probably be it for the main updates on the house yeah I think a video I think year two would be fine but by year three it would just be a video view with a calculator and a slide rule just yep not even talking still still going still making electricity yeah on the topic of wind turbines Dave McCracken had this to say it seems more than a bit hypocritical to complain about the ugliness of wind turbines when things like cell towers are much more ubiquitous across the landscape and no one even takes notice of them I agree with you Dave this is kind of linked in with my comment during our recording last week in which I said anytime anybody builds anything it's going to impact the view so to complain that this thing is ugly but that thing is not is a little um is that actually true how do you feel about that map I think it's all a matter of perspective you know like be and I older it's like there are people that complain about cell towers but I think for most people we don't even it's like we've we've blocked them out in our world it's like they're just kind of a thing and we don't really pay attention to them and I think people focus on the thing that they don't like so it's like people may not like wind turbines so they complain about how they look you know I mean it's like it feels like it's kind of like a this is an extension of their pre-existing beliefs on that thing so it's just to me that's how I look at it it's like when people playing ah it's an i or it's so cool they probably don't like when turbines in general yeah I believe that this cell tower is on the highway between New York and Massachusetts I think I've actually seen this in a car ride with you Matt there's a cell tower which is at the top of it they've masked the fact that it's a tower by putting fake Greenery like a as if pine tree a pine tree and it makes it look like the most poorly done and enormous artificial Christmas tree you've ever seen it is so laughably bad and I can't help but think that they put it where they did next to such a busy road to basically demonstrate that this isn't going to work like it's almost like a public advertising of like let's just have Towers because this looks dumb yeah yes it it's the most idiotic looking thing ever and on top of which it's like a four it looks like a 400t it stands four times as tall as tree in the area yeah is a quarter the size yeah every tree in the area is half as is not even close to being half as tall and if I remember correctly they're not even coniferous they're not pine trees so it's like it just stands up there like somebody had an idea there was also this comment from Baba rudra who was weighing in on the idea of when you see something and it impacts you at a young age how it affects you moving forward and Matt and I both talked about how we'd been on the cruise ship that we went on with our family and when we accidentally noticed that they were just dumping garbage into the ocean it had a pretty strong impact and Matt connected it to like loot you know clicking in on environmentalism saying like this is not okay to do this we need there has to A Better Way Babar rudra shared this anecdote it's interesting the things from our earlier lives that really stick with us and the shap and shape where we go Matt's reaction to the carnival garbage path when I was in the one environmental science class that was available at my Community College back in the early 90s we went on a field trip to the local sewage treatment plant being close to the shore in New Jersey treated sewage goes out outflow pipes into the ocean toward the end of the tour the director of the the plant or whomever he was who it was giving the tour said the solution to pollution is delution to which I laughed at the absurdity of what he said I said you're kidding right the director said no the ocean is a big place once this all gets diluted it'll be virtually gone me you're effing kidding right to which my professor chimed in Easy Mark or babarua for the rest of you director what else are we supposed to do with it me I don't have an answer answer to that but I don't think claiming something is a solution just because you don't have a better idea I don't care how catchy your slogan is director when you have an answer get back to me me go after yourself and I walked back to my car and I left I didn't get credit for the field trip but it opened my eyes to the closed mindedness of what we as a society have been facing quote forever I this is a very I think this is a very interesting and funny anecdote about yeah it literally the other option here would have been you going on a sewage treatment tour and it ending with and this is the rug that we put it all under it literally is not a solution at all and fingers crossed this was back in the 90s fingers crossed they're doing more to this sewage now than they were then I hope to God I hope so there was also this comment from free healer who wanted to weigh in on conversations we've been having about a topic around a forever home Matt's already talked about his house from the perspective of sustainability but hasn't yet really visited it in detail around a for home forever home concept for Aging in place and free healer jumps in to say regarding stairs because we talked about stairs in particular regarding our parents your parents are likely far more fit and healthy right now because they got a little bit of exercise every time they climbed up and down my in-law are in a three-story home on a hill you climb 12et just to the front door from the garage and they are still healthy enough to enjoy walks on the beach through the farmers market light traveling Etc in their late 80s might not be the case for everyone but stairs seem to have kept them strong I think that that is terrific it is fantastic that your in-laws are like that but absolutely not everybody is built that way and for our parents for whom a one-story house was coming problematic especially after unexpected illness a couple of Falls one story was now one story too many so yes absolutely there are those mobile people who stay mobile well into their 90s and live alone even and that's fantastic but I think that that is far more likely to be an outlier as opposed to the norm on now to our conversation this is from Matt's video on October 8th how the next big solar panel Tech is already here and a big component of the video is it's almost like this is a shadow Tech it's just been kind of like walking along in the background and nobody's really talking about it but it has some issues with it you talked about efficiency you talked about cost you talked about longevity I wonder too is there an issue and maybe there is not an issue within the field itself but maybe there is a public perception issue for people who are outside of the solar panel industry with the marketability of something that has as you point out right at the beginning two components that are incredibly toxic and you mention table salt you break it into its component parts both of those components are terribly toxic but we're all used to salt and nobody stops to think about salt and if you told somebody you know salt if you broke it into its components it's terribly toxic most people I would think would be like yeah but this is just salt but here we have a new technology and it is made out of something even though the components that go into a silicon based Tech also has toxicity to it do you think there is something about this new tech that is simply just too much of a ooh that's sounds gross I don't know um my initial gut reaction is no I think the biggest hurdles are efficiency and cost I think that's most likely what most people are looking at it's like what's the biggest bang for the buck I can get and right now silicon still kind of leads that charge um no pun intended but well played slow accidental funds um so I don't know if it's the toxicity angle that would be the one thing that's making people go uh because I think most people when they hear silicon solar or cadmium teleride solar they're kind of going what the what like they don't even know I think most people would not even know what the difference is so for me I think it's more about the efficiency and cost like oh like I could put 20 solar panels on my house versus you know 24 like it might take a few extra solar panels with one versus the other it means affects the cost I think that's the kind of angle that people would be looking at before thinking about like how toxic is the solar panel there are people out there that do think along those lines but I think they're definitely in the minority there were also some comments like this one from annihilated who said it always shocks me to see a solar panel manufacturer that doesn't have their solar panels all over the roofs of their buildings I guess this is some of the visuals within your video and it's a little bit like uh if we saw Alon musk pulling up in a Ford F-150 that was an electric vehicle it was it was it'd be a little like wait what's going on here uh I imagine for them in that moment the building might not have solar panels there may be solar panels nearby but also I questioned okay well their electricity needs maybe they just would out use solar panels what would be potentially the walking the walk talking the talk issue here I think most of it's probably like some of these companies may be doing that thing where you're buying electricity credits from a local solar farm that's offsite or somewhere nearby so like it's not on their building but they're getting solar energy through credits which is good but it's like here's the factory that's making them can you just take them off the end of the production line just walk up to the roof and just put them up there cuz it's like I don't understand why they're not doing it either it's really funny I love that annihilated pointed this out because it's caught my eye a few times but I've never thought to mention it and I feel like I probably should start calling it out every time we make a video like this because what's funny to me is sometimes these companies and people from these companies watch these videos and I would just like it to kind of percolate into those companies of be like hey yeah this YouTuber uh he's making fun of us because we don't have our own panels on our roof there's also issues potentially of maybe they don't own that structure maybe they're leasing maybe they're leasing a factory space and don't have the ability to put panels on it could be that that that could that actually is a good point they may not own them maybe be leasing so they don't have the rights to do it but still come on yeah yeah you could at least put a mobile solar station nearby like yeah like even if it's just a little 18wheeler truck with a couple panels the roof like we're running a computer Kyle McKenzie had this to to say I like that the cdte diversifies the supply chain for solar panels so if there is a disruption in Silicon production we have mature Alternatives this is a really important issue to weigh in on because when we put all of the eggs in that one basket and we discovered this through the uh pandemic years the shipping wo of getting goods and services you know products from one place to another it turns out that there's only a couple of hubs that are responsible for shipping vast amounts of goods around the world and when those places got shut down during the pandemic and continue to struggle to this day we end up with massive delays that from an outsider perspective don't make a lot of sense the ocean is a really big place how come there's only one path for these things and I agree ver verifying the supply chain is a great way to ensure that well if something happens in one field you've got coverage in another Well here here's a more recent uh example the Hurricanes here in the US we just had two massive hurricanes just weeks apart come through the South and decimate uh communities uh North Carolina got hit really bad and North Carolina has the most pure form of quartz in the world it supplies most of the courts that goes into like the Silicon industry for semiconductors all over the world and they were decimated and it shut down courtz production and it's going to have Ripple effects to the industry depending how long they can you know there is a you know they do have a backlog Supply so it's not like it just got turned off overnight but it's like diversifying our supply chains is a good thing so having an alternative to Silicon is a good thing so it's like the fact that the other thing that I find interesting is that for solar is a US company and they're mainly produced here and China is just starting to spin up now so it's kind of like having that diversification of who's making these kinds of solar panels is also a good thing so it's like it's it's good for everybody if we diversify as much as we can there was also this from just a guy who said the cool thing about cdte that you mentioned they are waste products of two very widely used metals and they don't really have any other uses so cdte panels will always always have a supply of raw material for not too much money I wonder is that a good assessment is it that these are not going to cost a lot or is it if these actually if these panels do take off don't the value of those Metals immediately go up as a result it's it's supply and demand it's like if the demand for cdte solar panels just skyrocketed and there wasn't enough supply of the materials even though there's no competition for it it would of course go up it's a supply it's a commodity so today it may be low prices and if the you know if it doesn't ramp at the same rate as the CDD Market it's like the prices could slowly go up so it it's going to very wildly based on what's going on in the world but the assessment is correct there's like no competition for this material it's like the only real industry that's using this is for the solar panels so that again back to the diversification is a good thing it's like you're not competing against the battery industry and this industry over here and that industry over there that's trying to go for the same exact materials it's like it's basically there just for the taking for the solar panel industry which is pretty cool yeah it struck me that if the percentage of CDD panels globally were to increase to get even close to the percentage of the US market the cost of their manufacturing materials would go through the roof because to increase globally from 4% to anything even close to 10% would be such a massive increase in need of production that it would start to I wonder how much that would impact the comparison between them and silicon and then that then goes back to the efficiency argument of like it's entirely possible isn't it that this panel could continue to be available for 100 years but never get the market share that's even close yes yep absolutely yep there was this comment as a Counterpoint from warp 9.9 who does not like the toxicity of the materials used warp writes initial thoughts after the intro cadmium is a really nasty substance and also rare so we shouldn't be using it in Tech and Mining and dispo and we shouldn't be using it in Tech and Mining and Disposal chains that risk environmental contamination maybe if recycling chains were mandated by law to be maintained by the companies fabricating the tech and if severe jail hundreds of millions or billions in fines penalties for improper disposal and cleanup Crews storm or disaster damage to raise help as well then maybe but I still think we should focus on Tech that won't poison us so readily it is important to remember that there are going to be a a lot of people out there who are going to have a response to this technology in this way what would you say to what would you say to warp 9 about this versus other Tech or do you not have a response other than yes you're absolutely right if this is your if this is your main focus on this technology then pushing back against it does make sense I don't know if I go that to that direction I think it's more along the lines of as I pointed out in the video chemium teleride itself is not as toxic as cadmium is by itself so it's like it's kind of overblown to look at it as the individual components because the solar panel itself is not going to be more toxic than a silicon solar panel it's perfectly safe it's just a matter of what do we do at the end of life on that I agree with the comment completely it's like we do need to have mandatory recycling of these things at the end of life and on that note the European Union does have laws on the books for stuff like this where manufactur have to take responsibility for the stuff they're putting in the world so they're kind of going down that direction the US is not but on the same kind of vein the US has a buring market around solar panel recycling specifically like there's a company called solar cycle in Texas I've visited them I've got a video about them they're doing some really cool stuff and they're not the only company doing this there's a bunch because there is money to be made around recycling solar panels for whoever can figure out how to do it the cheapest and solar Cycles well on their way to try to do that so it's the problem around that is absolutely solvable it's just a matter of making sure that we are solving it and with laws like you're were seeing in the EU and with companies that we're seeing pop up in this market I'm less concerned about that because it's it's not a like a plastic situation where the Plastic industry was lying to us about oh yeah we can recycle plastic and then we find out 50 years later oh no they haven't been recycling most the plastic we've ever had this is a very different situation so I would not apply Plastics to this but we need to keep their feet to the fire so I do agree with the idea of you know we really need to keep these companies feet to the fire so listeners what do you think are there any points of this topic that we missed please jump into the comments and let us know don't forget leaving a comment subscribing liking and sharing with your friends those are three very easy ways for you to support the podcast and we appreciate you doing that if you'd like to support us directly you can click the join button on YouTube or you can go to still tbdm click the become a supporter button there both of those ways AOW to throw coins at our heads we appreciate the welts and then we get down to the heavy heavy business of talking about I didn't even mention the Cure program how long how many teams of marketing people do you think these companies have working on acronyms that sound cute like oh cure perfect I just have to think of words that match that anyway thank you everybody for taking the time to watch or listen and we'll talk to you next time [Music]

2024-10-22 11:09

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