241: Shining a Light on Future Solar Tech

[Music] hi everybody in today's episode of still to be determined we're going to be talking about a variety of future Solar Products that well maybe they're not too far in the future welcome everybody to still to be determined the follow-up podcast to undecided with Matt frell I am not Matt frell I'm glad we got that cleared up I 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 of undecided with Matt frell which of course takes a look at emerging Tech and its impact on our lives and Matt how is your weekend impacting your life it's going well I know people hate it when we talk about weather it's a beautiful Fall New England trees are changing colors and there's one thing that's speaking of solar today uh I've been surprised at how much energy my solar panels in my new house are still generating in the middle of October um this is the first time in this house in October the middle of October I've had solar panels and good Lord like yesterday we that they were they were put in installation done and went live it was like right at the end of October so it's basically November was the first month we had it and I was I was like wonder how it's going to do in October CU in my old house it was like you could definitely notice a decline in this house I haven't noticed a steep decline we produced 69 kilowatt hours of power yesterday we don't wor we don't use anywhere close to that I was like uh really really pleasantly surprised and I know what I would attribute that to but what do you attribute that to it's been a we've had a nice string of sunny weather no clouds and the sun getting lower in the sky I think is actually at an optimal angle for my panels right now where in the sun summer they're a little too high it's a little too high so I have a feeling like right now it might be like the perfect like alignment to my house yeah also I know that when you designed this house you had it placed on the lot at an angle so that the roofs would be able to maximize the yeah we the lot we yeah we picked it sounds so bizarre I picked the lot based on the orientation of the lot thinking okay I want a house that has a roof that's gonna face as far south as we can get it right it was like there were lots we looked at that were decent but it was like ah it's gonna be facing a little like too much to the north not going to be able to fit it so like that was actually part of the the calculus and deciding what lot we picked so it's it's panning out Sean it's pretty cool yeah before we get into the conversation about your most recent video just kind of as a sneak peek into that since we're talking about your current house and lot placement just big picture yes or no it seems to me like some of the things that you talk about in your most recent video would alleviate some of those issues of oh this lot faces the wrong direction and my house will have to look weird facing a different angle in order for that roof to get that sun that it needs it seems like these texts would be a good answer to well your face your house doesn't face that way but it doesn't matter yeah that that's kind of whole point of this video which was not everything's going be an optimal situation it's like think about skyscrapers and like Urban infrastructure like you could put stuff on the sides of buildings or on the tops of buildings but it may not be perfect orientation your house might be in a in a weird location a lot that has trees on the side that would most likely make you say ah I can't do solar but these kind of things might help to address some of those issues yeah right so before we get into our deeper conversation about that we always like to swing back to our previous episode that would be episode 240 which was our discussion about solar Tech that was already here this was a development in solar Tech that had largely flown quietly under the radar but is out there in the world and remind everybody Matt the difference between this and the standard solar panel so mat just to refresh everybody about the solar Tech that we're talking about from last tweaks conversation this is a type of solar panel that's different than the standard ones that people usually think they're seeing what are those differences well the difference is like what makes up the solar panel so typically it's silicon that's in the vast majority of panels that are around the world today and this is cadmium teleride which is a different chemistry that it it like where silicon we put silicon in our computer chips we put silicon in like tons of things some of the ingredients for cun toride really aren't used by anything so there's like it's it's a waste material from other processes so here's a waste material that we could turn into a new solar panel that's essentially it interesting interesting that like the things we don't use we're always talking about shortages we're always talking about going into the ground and getting these things and how devastating they will be to the environment and but we have to because we need it because it's so important to the way we live and you forget about the things that people are like h I don't want that yeah I can't do anything with this yeah I can't eat this get it out of here so that conversation about the solar panels themselves almost could have fit within this conversation like it's interesting that it was solar Tech that was broken out and my understanding of the reason for breaking that one out into its own video is largely because that Tech is actually out in the world and the stuff that is in this video seems largely to be still in the lab and figuring out how to make it work is that a good assessment yeah 100% cium teleride is a thing it's out there it's still growing but most people don't know about it because silicon dominates the field and then this other stuff is absolutely 100% in the lab super early days just early research so the reason I mentioned that that video is kind of a sister video to your most recent one I encourage people if they haven't watched the video about the cadmium T ride uh panels you could watch it in concert with Matt's most recent because it is all kind of a piece and I think that that's interesting and the reason I point that out here is because the conversation in the comments seemed to be largely focused on things other than the solar panels which was the main part of the conversation instead people zeroed in on conversational topics such as our conversation about sewage treat plants which was born itself of another comment so there was this comment from Steve who wrote in to say unfortunately in 2024 we're still seeing sewage pollution issues a local town is paying huge fines because they didn't keep up with the maintenance and expansion of their treatment plant several times over the last few years there have been uncontrolled discharge events into the local River I love the discharge events e euphemism that's just human waste going into the local River great gross junker jumped into the comments to say one thing about sewage treatment the treated water is basically non-toxic and bacterial level levels are under control with solids and numerous known contaminants removed not all but most that's about the best we can do plants actually do pretty well finishing the job Lake taho's water system pumps the treated sewage into a reserved Watershed by the time it reaches the other side you can't tell that it started life as treated sewage in any case this is massively different than you would H than what would happen if you pumped untreated sewage into the ocean or into a watershed or river I wanted to share both of those comments because on the one hand we have somebody saying yeah there's a town that has really kind of screwed things up and they inadvertently discharge stuff into the river and then here's the Counterpoint which is if it's done right it's fine you can do it you can do it you can do it and that's that's the thing if you do it right it's okay and and neither matter I are out there saying like do something else with human sewage that is not that is not the calling that we're sending out that's making me think of like what would Shawn be proposing to do with our sewage what is Sha's idea about what we do what do we do with the sewage Sean well I got a list hang on let me get it there was also a bit of back and forth in the comments about our discussion of strangely enough disguising cel towers as trees Matt you will remember of course that we have driven past the large tower that is four times as tall as any tree nearby and is wrapped in what looks like a bunch of discarded Christmas trees and victrol man jumped into the comments to say the species of those tall evergreen trees masquerading as a desized cell tower is called the shakala slow clap thank you victrol man that I thought was wonderful fantastic fantastic no notes and there was also this from Mac Fisher who wrote I nerd out on TV and radio towers to include cell towers monopoles ran pyod Towers panel antennas different frequency antennas and mounting configurations a company I work on on a New England project with this C he wanted cellular towers but didn't want Towers answer no Tower no cellular that area ended up not getting coverage deep pocket company spent like $100,000 for one fake pine tree Tower I mean this is a case similar to where you live Matt where a town has made a deal yep for a type of Internet service provision which doesn't make any sense for the consumers and it's all probably because a Salesman came in and said there's trouble trouble in River City and he did his song and dance and convinced the town Elders you know what you don't want you don't want access you want this you want us to do it all and do it all in a way that makes it super problematic for consumers and you've been butting your head against that wall so I think this is another cas of townships not having the best interest of the town in mind for whatever reason well well here's here's the argument i' would make is sometimes the town thinks that thinks they're making the best argument for the town not thinking about the long-term reifications because like in my town the deal they struck with a very large cable and internet company that most people would know is craptastic um they promised basically's funny is everybody listening is hearing a different name filling in craptastic everybody has their own like nobody likes any of these companies so somebody out there is just like oh I know who they're talking about somebody oh I know who they're talking about no I know who they're talking about but they uh they cut a deal with the town because they were going to bring in fiber for the local industry where I live and basically we're going to run this into your town there'll be this highspeed fiber that will help provide thing for the local industry and they were kind of like that's great and so they signed this contract because this company was going to take the brunt of the infrastructure costs of doing that so you'd say okay they made a good decision because it didn't cost the taxpayers money to get that fiber in for the local industry but guess what they're not sharing that fiber with the residents so it's like now we're in this position as a resident of this town I can't get fiber internet every town around me has it every single town we don't because this craptastic company they have a monopoly of if you want cable television you basic got one choice if you want any kind of high-speed internet you got one choice and it's because the town signed this deal because they it was kind of this myopic you know like who needs like crazy fast high speed it's like it's good enough for the residences it's the industry that needs the high speeds not thinking 5 years from now so it's it it was a shortsightedness that leads to these problems like what Mac Fisher brought up to I don't have the link on me but I actually found a YouTube video of the signing of that agreement and immediately upon signing it you can hear in the background from some unknown location that's very very good impression child thank you I think it was the alderman finally on the topic of cell towers there was a quick comment from octo Thorp who I think is confirming the exact tower that Matt and I have been referring to octo Thor jumps in to say there's a cell Tree near the border of New York and Connecticut on the hutch Meritt Parkway it's hilarious that's the one that is the exact one that is the exact one so I think what we should do is we should start a new tradition where around Christmas time we go and decorate the cell tower we climb up the tower and we climb up the towers bunch of like tinsel a few ornaments and some lights I think it would be lovely yes the only problem with that is planes would probably get caught in it because they would be like is that the airport and then uh oh finally I wanted to share this comment just for I don't know I just like the fact that we are are two countries separated by a Common Language this is from a a viewer in the UK Ken H writes very off topic but I really wondered what you were talking about when you said that a one-story building was too much for your parents implication was that they needed a no story building then I realized it's a quirk of our not that common language in the UK a one-story house is a bungalow with no upstairs we have a two-story house with a ground floor and a first floor I have noticed that in the US in buildings with lifts sorry elevators I have to get out at floor one to actually leave the building whereas in the UK you'd have to walk down a final flight of stairs if you got out at one yes these are some of just some of the differences between us and our UK counterparts where like oh I can go there I speak that language and then you find what what do you mean I'm on the wrong floor having worked in a building with people from the UK who when they first come over they spend a good week getting out at the first floor and then I watch them as I get to the lobby and they come through the stairwell with a sheepish look on their [Laughter] face America that's right we know how to count that's right it's all about like it literally is like well you're here now so how many floors up are you going you're going one floor up you're going two floors up it makes sense but well it also doesn't make sense if you're saying floor you're at floor one now you're at two yes and now to our discussion about Matt's most recent this is from October 15th why these quirky advances could change solar forever and before we get into the content itself I wanted to talk a bit about the delivery Matt you have asked you sent out the call how do people find the translation services you've heard some negative comments about oh this is turning it into a garbled mess translation services that are hard baked in to his videos and available on YouTube so you can watch in your native language well there's this from James heler who says I am from India and I just watch the video in Hindi I'd say it's working pretty good other than the lips think is working wonderfully it's not translating all the worlds like all the words like solar and efficiency just like we do in real life so that's a plus so I thought that was yeah that's really really cool jokes on you James Matt has been recording his videos in Hindi I am fluent in Hindi yeah no I'm barely fluent in English sorry that's making me laugh okay this from Baba rudra who says interesting research that's definitely worth keeping an eye on it would be interesting to see whatever happened to some of the old solar research that has gone on before remember solar roads solar sidewalks solar roofing which I see in YouTube ads that I always figure are another one of those scams just hoping I mistakenly click on it yeah you and I talked about some tech like we've now been doing this podcast for I mean seriously what is it now uh four years four years and some of I remember some of the discussions we had four years ago were about tech similar to this about like is there a is is there an ability to uh do solar roads and I know there was some talk in one of our videos about charging stations that would just be built under roads and stuff like that and and as time has moved forward your your response has been like yeah those Concepts have fallen into the trash pile so to talk about just like big picture Babar rudra mentioned a couple of the old solar research topics but amongst not only these but can you think just off the top of your head of some of the other also Rands that you know are just like these are not going anywhere based on your understanding of what's going on in the research it's not that they're not going anywhere some of the stuff like transparent solar panels are still a thing there's still a lot of research there are companies that are bringing it out but it like it is such a niche thing because of the efficiencies of those panels that at this point it's not going to catch on um just because the cost benefit doesn't work out even though the technology Works you're just not dollar for dollar make it happen right so it's like they're still working on it and I hope they can make it work but it's like it's one of those it's getting kind of sketchy the more you look at it the longer it goes on and then there's another one that I just every Friday me and my team we post a fun fact Friday up on my social accounts so like up on X and you know Instagram and stuff like that and this past week we put up one about the solar roadway about a company that is doing solar panels in between the railroad tracks and they spent gobs of money working with a company that built a train car that is designed to lay these things down on the tracks and then pick them up as modules if something goes wrong and swap them out and they're doing a pilot project that's like 100 meters long I think it is um I can't remember where they're doing it but they're doing a pilot project see how well this works and I posted this the reason I said this is a good one that we should post for Friday was I'm like I look at that and go how is that's not gonna that's not g to work well and so we posted it basically like what do you think like do you think this even has a shot and the responses are all like that's insane and I actually one of my patrons has experienced working in Railways and said those things are going to get demolished yeah like a train going over I know sprays debris and its wake it pulls along with it uh like gravel that are un that's under the train tracks I know that the train is moving fast enough that some of those are literally like swirling around like just shrapnel underneath the train this this is exactly the point of like the solar roadways and stuff like that there is stuff that it's like they take Serious abuse so it's kind of like imagine all the panels that get okay you designed a train that can swap it out Bravo but how often you can be changing those things out cuz they keep getting smashed and destroyed and then how much money is that going to cost you every time you have to swap those out how does that make sense when you could just you could put the solar panels literally on like a stilt racking system that goes over the train tracks and you've completely removed you don't need some kind of special train car it's not going to get run over by it's like it's just one of those there's things like that that pop up that make you just go did nobody think this through and there how much money doing the pilot test I just found that story fun which is why I shared it last week I thought it was just like to me I think it's bananas but I was curious to see what other people thought but it's there is tons of stuff like that on the roadway the like littering the roadway of solar research that's just like you think about it it's like I don't think it's gonna work there was a comment from matus zelga holy he I think he's implying crap yeah holy crap I'm surprised that you're talking about my alma moner nice to see about Polish Polish researches on undecided so I wanted to pull this comment out just to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about the research that's going on in this field is a global effort this is not one region or one country has the market cornered on any of this as far as like being the dominant research force in this or the dominant corporate Force we have of course companies and countries that are the highest of manufacturing but the research itself and what the hope for this technology is is not isolated to any one place so other than Poland do you want to just rattle off a few of the other places that you know of that have been making a footprint in solar research that are maybe not the country or regions that we would typically think oh yeah that that kind of research is going to take place there I mean take your politics aside and put those off the side but like China of course is the huge one China has tons of research that they're doing in facets of solar that might surprise people but they're doing a lot of amazing things but the ones I would call out are like Korea there's a lot of stuff coming out of Korean technological institutes that are doing amazing research Australia is another big one that has tons of interesting not even just solar doing tons of stuff with hydrogen and solar like they're they're doing amazing things down there um and then of course pick your European country like there's there's Poland there's you know the UK's doing stuff Germany's got a bunch of stuff so it's like there's some amazing research happening in the smattering of European countries and then of course I'm the United States of course we have a couple of very prestigious institutes that are constantly doing amazing work but for me it's Australia Korea and then hand full of European countries that are like you might not expect it but they're doing some really good work there was this comment from SEO Elizabeth who said what happened to the clear PV to use on Office Buildings it is fun to watch those things evolve and I've been doing so for decades so this was a tech that I remember we talked about a long time ago the idea that you could take a solar panel that would be clear and layered on the top of a window and then something like the New York City skyline which is of course lots and lots of glass cover some of those buildings with this material and you start generating electricity that way whatever happened to that I kind of brought that up earlier and the the stuff that's littering the path of solar research that went nowhere this is that thing where it's like it is there it works it is possible to do but there the costs of the system system just do not make sense yet so that's part of the reason why you're not seeing it you're only seeing it in like pilot projects or Pilot tests you're rarely seeing this kind of stuff just like taking over to New York or anything like that you're not going to see it because it's like the amount of money you'd spend doing it and the amount of power you get out of it just doesn't make sense when you could put just regular bifacial solar panels on the roof of your skyscraper it would cost you way less and you might get almost a similar amount of production out of so it's like that's the battle right now in transparent clear PB is trying to get that price point and installation cost low enough that it would make Financial sense to do right there's also this from DuBois who said I love the graphic at 7 Minutes 22 I think the possibility of recapturing energy expended by indoor lighting is something that I've never really considered but makes a lot of sense even if the efficiency is low or very low it would be better than nothing reusable energy in any way particularly in the winter months when we use more indoor lighting would be really interesting to know if any companies are working on projects to make indoor PV panels a thing so you want to talk a little bit about the idea of the indoor panel and how that might work and is that even like again we're talking about price point if a company is looking at putting in indoor paneling and it's going to cost four times as much as just putting a panel on the outside yep that's I I I'm going to I rarely do this I tend to remain undecided and keep an open mind but on this you're never going to see solar panels that you're going to install inside your house that are going to put Power into your home you that's never going to happen it's like if you want to power your house it's going to be on in your backyard on your roof something like that outside panels for the inside panels there are lots of interesting companies doing amazing work around low light solar panel Tech but that panel Tech is the kind of thing you'd have built into your remote control for your TV it would be built into like you have motion sensors and things around your house for your smart home they would be built into those it would be more about powering individual devices so that you don't have batteries to change out you just get them you plop them where you want them and then you just never think about charging them ever and you don't have to worry about changing charging changing batteries that's where that Tech is really going to kind of hopefully catch on because that's where it financially makes most sense so on indoor solar panels think individual pieces of electronics not whole home whole home here's dollar for dollar it's the outside panels that will always be Champs finally somebody looking forward to a future in which it sounds like most of our energy needs would just be washed away luses right it's pretty much a given that if PV cells hit near 80% efficiency you will see them on the Roes of every EV and on hoods trunks too charging is the Achilles heel of EVs and a panel that can recharge a pack in near real time would render ice but all but obsolete that of course is an internal combustion engine and the applications don't end there large roof Vehicles like Vans trucks buses portable DC to AC inverters generators High concentration dwelling applications high energy demand Industries and remote off-grid installs be excited for what is to come I want to live in the future that lusus sees coming yeah but I want to ask you the 80% efficiency would it in fact meet the needs that he describes there could you put if a panel was hitting 80% efficiency would that be enough to charge an electric vehicle not in real time though it's like there's no and is that 8% efficiency even likely or is it even the goal is it even important that it gets 80% no I would keep argu I keep bringing this up but efficiency is a little bit not completely a little bit of a red herring it's a little bit of a don't get lost in the efficiency argument because it comes people hate it when when I say stuff like this money makes the world go round it's like it comes down to costs it comes down to efficiency is One Piece piece of the puzzle when you're looking at what belongs together and what works the best it's one piece not the sole piece so for a car my argument would be the goal would never be able to be able to recharge a car near real time that would just one that's never going to happen and we don't even need it just think about how often you drive your car every day most people drive their car it's like 30 to 50 miles a day you know that's the a that's in the United States that's the average so it's like as long as you have solar panels in your car that could add back in 25 40 50 miles just being by left outside during the day it's not going to be real time but if you can get that back over the course of sitting in a driveway for 12 hours it's like it doesn't need to be real time it just needs to be can you recoup the energy that you used in your three trips during the day MH at the time where your car is sitting in the parking lot at the grocery store at the time it's sitting in a driveway at your house that the thing that we should be thinking about so I would argue it doesn't matter if it's 80% or 50% it's just can it achieve that use case that's going to be the goal and you would still end up in that awesome future that I hope we get to because I do agree with that sentiment there's a ton to be excited about but I would make the case don't get hung up on efficiency alone that is not the sole argument here it it comes down to what's affordable how well does it work and what is the ultimate use case you're trying to achieve sounds grounded as usual if anybody knows Matt they know him to be a grounded person in fact you can't get him to get off the ground listeners viewers let us know what you think jump into the comments as you can tell the comments are a major component of the program and we appreciate you're taking the time to jump into the comments on Matt's videos and to jump in the comments on our videos don't forget too that you can help help us out not only by leaving a comment but simply subscribing sharing with your friends liking the video all of those are very easy ways for you to support us you can also support us directly by clicking the join button on YouTube or going to still tbdm click the become a supporter button there both of those ways allow you to throw coins at our heads we appreciate the weth and then we get down to the heavy heavy business of talking about human sewage thanks everybody for taking the time to watch or listen and we'll talk to you next time [Music]

2024-10-31 09:10

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