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Matt and Sean talk about wave energy converters and power generation, and how in the long run it could outpace solar and wind as a sustainable, renewable energy source.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, How Waves Could Quietly Overtake Solar & Wind: https://youtu.be/l1pxV7Nro34
Matt and Sean talk about wave energy converters and power generation, and how in the long run it could outpace solar and wind as a sustainable, renewable energy source.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, How Waves Could Quietly Overtake Solar & Wind: https://youtu.be/l1pxV7Nro34
- (00:00) - Introduction
Follow us on X: @stilltbdfm @byseanferrell @mattferrell or @undecidedmf
Undecided with Matt Ferrell: https://www.youtube.com/undecidedmf
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Creators and Guests
What is Still To Be Determined?
Join Matt Ferrell from the YouTube Channel, Undecided, and his brother Sean Ferrell as they discuss electric vehicles, renewable energy, smart technologies, and how they impact our lives. Still TBD continues the conversation from the Undecided YouTube channel.
Sean Ferrell: Today I'm still to be determined. We're talking about the motion of the ocean.
You're proud of yourself for that one. Hi everybody. It's me, your friend, Sean Farrell, writer of Sci-fi and some things for kids. Just generally curious about tech and luckily for me, my brother is that Matt from Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which of course takes a look at immersion tech and its impact our lives.
And this is the follow-up podcast still to be determined in which we talk about the things that Matt has talked about because what's better about talking about, talking about talking about.
It's been a long day here in Brooklyn
Matt Ferrell: podcast inception. Sean,
Sean Ferrell: this is, it's been a long day. Yes. We're all waiting for the top to stop spinning, but we don't know if it will with me, as [00:01:00] always, is the aforementioned.
Matt. Matt, how are you today?
Matt Ferrell: I'm doing great, Sean. Um, waiting on
Sean Ferrell: some furniture. Apparently
Matt Ferrell: I'm waiting on some furniture. Uh, there's something that I'm, I wanna bring up that might, you might find alarming. I got a device for my new car. I have a a Hyundai Ionic. I just got recently and one of the things I miss from my old Tesla is autopilot.
Like it was a really good for all the calling it full self-driving when it's technically not full self-driving shenanigans. It's a really incredible system and I do kind of miss it. There's an open source project that has. An add-on that you can put in pretty much any car and it's basically a, an Android phone that has stereoscopic cameras on one side and then a little camera to watch the driver to make sure their eyes are where they're supposed to be, and you just attach it to your windshield and it basically adds the same [00:02:00] functionality to any car.
And it's a piece of hardware that I think is like the equivalent of like a seven or 8-year-old Android phone, and yet it's capable. Of driving a car.
Sean Ferrell: And how is that just out there?
Matt Ferrell: What, what I was saying, I've, I watched some YouTubers do some reviews on it. It looked really impressive for what it can do.
And obviously these are systems that are not meant to be like, Hey, take a nap and let the car drive you. This is. Driver has to be fully aware, fully engaged, doing all this stuff, but it just helps to remove the stress of a, like a long road trip. It makes it a lot more enjoyable. The built-in system's. The built-in system's fine.
In my Hyundai it's fine, but it's not, it's not that great and it's like I kind of miss my Tesla for that. So this is this little add on. I was gonna be [00:03:00] testing for some road trips that we'll be doing soon and, uh. I know you're gonna find it horrifying that if you're ever in the car with me, you're gonna please probably say to me, please turn that off.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. Yeah. I like myself in driving cars built by multi-billion dollar companies, not just. I got this old Android phone and, um,
Matt Ferrell: well, well, the thing is, is like these, the, the models that are doing the driving, it's very similar to Tesla, where it's just done by vision and it's tapped into the car system, so it knows the speed, all that kind of stuff.
But what I find fascinating is like they do the model training on supercomputers. So they're, they're constantly updating the system and they're doing the new model training in these supercomputers supercomputer systems, and then they're. Distill that model down into something that can actually then be put onto this basically seven or [00:04:00] 8-year-old Android phone.
And it works. And that's the thing that I find the most shocking is like you have companies like Nvidia and Tesla that are putting more and more powerful computers inside the cars to do more and more stuff to be able to do this kind of thing. And then the open source community is like here. Hold my beer.
Sean Ferrell: I just love it. That's very wild. Yeah. I both look forward to the results of your testing and I'll pray that the testing goes well on now to our conversation about our last episode. We always like to dip into the comments on our previous episode, so from episode 2 64. There were some people jumping in on our conversations about electric structural batteries that might lighten the load as far as aviation are concerned.
And there was this one from Frozen Llama who says, I think Matt might be a little behind [00:05:00] the times on electric aviation. Ho Ho, Matt, the gauntlet has been thrown. Oh Snap. Recently David Roberts interviewed the CEO of a hydrogen fuel cell aviation startup, and last year he talked to the founder of a full up battery electric plane, E-V-T-O-L company that at the time of the interview, their product had a range of 300 miles with major orders from an Oregon transport company at UPS.
The more recent interview acknowledged that reaching the scale of commercial passenger jets would be a challenge. But smaller scale regional route could be a doable soon thought. It was interesting the you and I always talk about the right tool for the right job. Something that is not commercial passenger.
'cause when we talk about aviation, I think I naturally think about passenger planes. Yeah. I just naturally lean toward that in my mind because believe it or not, I haven't ridden aboard a [00:06:00] UPS plane. So I tend not to think about commercial like package carriers. Yeah. So it's an interesting idea that you could have smaller scale planes, drones effectively perhaps transporting things like UPS packages local, say from New York to Philly, as opposed to taking passengers from LA
Matt Ferrell: to
Sean Ferrell: New York.
Matt Ferrell: What do you have to say about that? I did. I thought I did mention that when we were talking about it, about how regional flight is possible, but longer than that is not, that's what I meant. And the planes that are currently, they're not really in production yet. They're still flight testing them. Yeah. Uh, those planes are like, imagine a 20 to 30 person plane, you know, if you're talking about a passenger sized jet.
So it's, mm-hmm. It's a jet. It's a smaller jet and these are more regional flights going from Newark, New Jersey to Boston and FedEx and UPS have tons of these, like more smaller regional planes that [00:07:00] do like next day delivery kind of stuff all over the place. And then on top of which regional flights going from, let's say, Newark, New Jersey to Boston, Massachusetts.
So this is a very common thing and it's absolutely getting very close to that. I was actually invited out to. One of the companies that is building one of these electric planes. Um, and I was trying to see if I could get on a test flight, uh, at that company and, uh, wow, you're really
Sean Ferrell: suddenly turning bold in your, in your old age.
You just,
Matt Ferrell: well it was like, it was like, for, for me, this is gonna be be the YouTuber in me, it, the video. I've done videos on electric flight before. But for me to do, revisit it, it was like it needed to be more experiential. So it's like, I've already talked about it, but now let's try to show it. And they were gonna let me come into the factory and take a look around and I could see all the stuff, but I was not gonna be able to fly on it because insurance reasons.
Yeah. Which makes a lot of sense. [00:08:00] 'cause to, to get a, to get somebody that's not from the company on a, on the plane would take a lot of FAA like. Rigmarole and insurance issues. Uh, so it was like, we can't get you on the plane but we can let you see the plane. And so I kinda like passed on it at that moment 'cause it was like there was nothing new to add from what I've already talked about in the past.
Right. But frozen llama, you are completely correct that these are within reach for regional flights. That's something that's gonna be happening in the next few years easily. But when you start tar, talking about like flying from New York to Los Angeles. Nope. Not even close. Not not. It's like I can't even imagine where that time's gonna be because it's just not feasible at this point.
Sean Ferrell: Yes, and given the discovery that we've just made all of us together, that my brother is looking for thrill rides based on technological developments. I do not hope to ever see a headline. I. [00:09:00] It says somebody has developed a battery powered parachute. Our next comment that caught my eye was from Dean McManus.
Dean has appeared in our comments before. Thank you, Dean, for being a regular viewer and also for dropping in with such nice, chunky comments. They're always interesting to read. He's weighing in on our conversation around a moonshot approach like a. Setting a bold goal in the future to try and make a thing happen.
And he was talking a bit about the structural battery idea around aviation just like pro Lama was. And he had this to say toward the end of his comment, shooting for super energy dense batteries for planes is a good goal for solving the pro that problem and others, but it still needs to be economically viable.
Like the recently announced Chinese batteries from BOYD and CATL that charge hundreds of miles in an EV in five minutes. [00:10:00] It is a very convenient, but the charging infrastructure may be a big hurdle to achieve in volume and longevity is uncertain. Plus, ultimately, since 80% of EV owners slowly charge up overnight at home for little cost, does everyone need this new speedy technology?
He asks an interesting question as far as, yeah. Is there that much of a draw? I think we have in our heads. It's hard to let go of the thinking. I'm driving around in my car. Oh, I'm low on fuel. There's probably a gas station within a stone's throw of here. Even if you're say on a long stretch of highway, you probably have enough gas to get to the next filling station.
Yep. It's a little hard to let go of the idea of when I drive, if I need power, I go to the place almost at will take care of it immediately, and then I'm on my way shifting toward the, oh, I make [00:11:00] sure I plug it in at night. Yep. And do you think that that is, as Dean points out, is that a mindset that needs to.
Disappear because infrastructure changes and we end up with the power stations within close proximity and our EVs can charge super fast. Or do you think it's a mindset problem that doesn't really matter and people's lived experience might mean the infrastructure doesn't have to change all that much?
Matt Ferrell: I, I think I'm gonna put up a third option. It's both, right? This is not an either or. It's all of the above. So Dean is completely correct, and I hear this argument a lot from the EV community of like, ah, this is all overblown. You don't need any of this stuff. 50% of the people in the United States live in houses.
That means 50% of people live in apartments. They live in [00:12:00] areas where they may not. Have a car to charge in a garage. Yeah. You live in Brooklyn? Yes. It's like you do not have a garage if you have a car. I do not. It's gonna be parking in random locations where you can find a spot on the street every day and it's gonna be different place every time.
And so it's like the idea for somebody, like in that situation you need fast charging. You absolutely would need it. So it's like there, it's not a either or? It's It's both. It's also cities and towns doing more, uh, slow charging rollouts. So like, let's say New York City along the sidewalks, more locations where there's like level two chargers that are plugged in because cars are not driven most of the time.
So you're at work, you could be charging up while you're working, you're home in bed. It could be charging overnight. So it's like, it's kind of like a, a little bit of everything. We kind of have to do more level two chargers. We need more fast charging. We need all of it. So it, it is definitely a moonshot.
To do this. Yeah, we to push it. So I think it's, [00:13:00] it, it try kind of drives me nuts when I hear the EV community just completely discounted. Like, ah, it's over overblown. It's like, I don't think it is. I think there is an element that we do have to address because not everybody can do this.
Sean Ferrell: Finally, from our last episode, I wanted to share this comment from REU Kasu who wrote in, in response to, I believe it's me pointing out that I was at a different setup.
I was in the setup that I'm in now. Yeah. A temporary setup where my camera is in one place, but the monitor's in a different place. So I'm constantly having to do this, and for people who are listening and not watching, I look like I'm losing my mind. But Ryu jumps in to point out. They have even a better setup.
Funny. My setup has two monitors, one set above the other with a camera in the middle. I often wonder how odd I look to others going between looking up [00:14:00] to looking down. That'd be great. I love this. Yes. So why the simplicity? Just for that? I am a simple man when it comes to comedy. Oh, it's a rabbit with a sledgehammer hitting a duck in the head with a hammer.
That's. Comedy gold to me. So the idea of Ray sitting on a Zoom call and going,
love it. Thank you so much very for the comments on our last episode, and now we'll transition over to talking about Matt's most recent, how waves could quietly overtake solar and wind. Yes, this is new. Breakthroughs in wave energy, power generation. So you take the thing, you put it on the water, and you let the motion of the ocean do the work.
That's right. This is gonna be a tricky conversation for two slightly immature 50-year-old men. Yes. [00:15:00] So first, let's get these outta the way, Matt. Okay. Uh, regular viewers of this podcast will recall that when it comes to bad jokes, particularly puns, Matthew and I are both prone to enjoying. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The puns. So a couple of comments caught my eye. They were right next to each other in the comments. As a matter of fact, Joe Poe pointed out harnessing wave energy would be swell. Like every new technology it has its ups and downs. Yes, Joe Po. So clap. Yes, Joe po. Congratulations. Arta Rado is not to be outdone by Joe Po.
So immediately beneath Arta jumps in to say. Well, the idea of renewables is not the find the one energy, but for all of them to work [00:16:00] in tandem. So seeing a new tool for the energy kit makes me go, yeah, buoy.
Arta gets it. Yes. Arta and Joe Poe, chef Chef's Kiss. I am putting you on our Hall of Fame wall. Wonderful notes, wonderful stuff. No notes. No notes is absolutely perfection. And as if finding those two next to each other wasn't enough. There are also these two comments that go hand in hand, although these are now serious comments.
These are not, these are not intended to be funny. Has Zos jumped in to say, my senior design project, we actually designed and built a prototype. Of a wave energy generator. We tested it in the school's pool. At the end of the day, we actually made power. It wasn't a lot of power, but it was still power. Our design was actually [00:17:00] not too dissimilar to what Core Power is doing.
Just much more advanced, very cool project. And going through the process taught me that there is a whole hell of a lot of power that can be harvested out there. Getting just a tiny percent can be enough when you multiply it by scale. I thought that was really. Really cool that a school project revolved around this tech.
It's nice to know, I don't know where has DA's school was located, but good to know that schools are doing this kind of hands-on pushing the envelope kind of research in the classroom. I think that was very exciting to read about and then in the complete opposite direction. From Cy, I worked as an engineer on Wave Power Research in the late 1970s and early 1990s.
I believe it's a typo that Cy early 19 hundreds. I see why. I don't know who you are, but I'm sure you're not that old, but I assume it was the 1980s or maybe [00:18:00] 1990s. So the late seventies, early eighties, perhaps. It was an exciting, exciting time to be in that field, and I was sad when research was abandoned in favor of wind power.
This is great news and intuitively based on what we did in those early days, I see this as a real solution, not another money sink. I thought it was a really, really interesting book ending that these two comments were near each other. Yeah. One from somebody who's like, this was a school project I just did, and the person who said I was involved in some of the research in the seventies that it's nice to see is now bearing fruit.
I think that it's, uh, it speaks well to the progress of this tech that it's not pie in the sky, brand new. Somebody just thought of it and is trying to build prototypes. This date's back, that's half a century. Yeah, 50 years back to the seventies. So. Do you wanna talk a little bit about, you point out in the video that the [00:19:00] prototypes that they're using here are unique in that the inside includes what effectively looks like a shock absorber just inside Yeah.
The sphere that as it's moving up and down, it gains more. Energy producing motion, then the, then the flotation device would indicate from the outside. On the outside, it's gonna look like it's going up and down with the waves. And on the inside it's got this rebounding spring effect. It reminds me of, strangely, remember the shake weight, the yes advertisements, A lot of holding the shake weight, and it was this thing that vibrated in your hands and it looked absurd.
We won't talk about what it looked like, but it was working muscles because you were having to try and stabilize it. So you were working muscles both like pushing up and down quickly, rapid succession, more energy output than you would anticipate when you're holding [00:20:00] that kind of thing. And I'm like, this is kind of the same thing in reverse.
Yeah. It's going to be a surprising amount of movement on the inside of that sphere and. Do you wanna talk a little bit about the development toward that? What have some of the other models looked like? Oh, good lord, that didn't, and, and it's a little bit like revisiting the scene from airplane where we have strikers, flashbacks include all sorts of strange contraptions, like a car with an umbrella and an airplane that has 12 sets of wings.
I'm not asking for like hard spec details, but how unique is this design to this? W do all of them kind of bear some sort of resemblance to that or were there some No. That were
Matt Ferrell: wildly different? They're wildly different. This is one of the things I find so fascinating about this. This is not the first time I've touched on this topic before.
It's been a few years that I've been touch, touching on it. It's because it's, it's not a theoretical problem that they're [00:21:00] trying to see if they can even do, it's one of those, everybody knows that this can be done. There's energy there. The question is, is it's the. It's the engineering challenge, right? Can we do it affordably and in a way where a marine fouling and all the, the ocean is a very un hospitable place for technology.
Can we make it so that it lasts for 20 years? So those are the big things that we've been struggling with for decades. The I, but the idea of getting energy outta the ocean is not new, and some of the designs are bananas. And some of these that I'm about to describe failed for. Obvious reasons, but one of them that came out a few years ago got a lot of attention.
It looked like almost like an eel. It was like this undulating thing that would just kinda like imagine just kind of like a, a tarp that's a big rectangle and it has like a spine down the back of it and you just put it in the water and the current causes it to kind of do this and all those joints in the spine.[00:22:00]
Our little actuators and things that are capturing that motion and converting to electricity. And it was like, got a lot of attention. And guess where it went? Nowhere. Uh, there's other ideas that are like, uh, installing them. Imagine like on, on, on dikes or like, uh, piers where you've got wa waves crashing up against the the pier.
You've got these almost like big paddle boards, these huge boards that are just like sitting out away from the edge and they're getting crashed, just moving, doing that over and over again. Um, the design that, that sounds like it would be
Sean Ferrell: horribly noisy. I
Matt Ferrell: can imagine
Sean Ferrell: that would've been like, yes. That would've felt like, like, could somebody please close that door?
'cause that's driving me crazy.
Matt Ferrell: But the ones that have. I think had the most longevity for being tested, like, as we've seen from the comments, is this buoy design that bobs in the ocean in some fashion. [00:23:00] That's, that's the one that you see iterations on that the most from what we've found. Um, but the way that they do it is all different and like the, what they're trying to do on the insides is completely different.
And like the one I described, like you said, the shake weight thing, the thing I love about that one is that they can. Negate the waves energy. So if it's like a hurricane coming through, it would just destroy that buoy. But you can basically just reverse the energy of the wave with that shake weight, and then suddenly it's like the, it's just like.
Stationary and the waves are just going crazy all around it. Right. And it's just sitting there because it can cancel. It's cancel out. It's inertial.
Sean Ferrell: Dampener in, it's like the inertial dampeners in um, star Treks, like Yeah, exactly. Suddenly these turns, that should be G Forces destroying our bodies are absolutely fine.
Matt Ferrell: Right. So it's, it's one of those, this is not, like, this is not thought of 20 years ago. It may have been thought of 20 years ago, but to pull it off may have [00:24:00] been way too expensive and it may have broken down. And now the technology has matured to a place where it's super cheap and they can do it more effectively.
And the, the watertight seals are better and all that kind of stuff. So there's, it's probably not like a series of like one or two kind of breakthroughs or advances. It's probably dozens and dozens of. Parts that have just gotten improved and dropped in cost to the point where now it's becoming more and more feasible to do this, which I find fascinating.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, that's very cool. I also wondered about, one of the things you weighed in on, um, was talking about the side of this, which is what's the impact, the long-term impact of these on marine life and from even just a noise pollution perspective and. Things like that, and I couldn't help but wonder about would there be value in looking at already existing locations where say an oil rig [00:25:00] maybe has already either already figured out the low impact approach or more likely has already so contaminated the area with.
Noise pollution, that it would be negligible to say, well, we could go in and tie ourselves to the rig area and not actually do any more damage. Like not avoid damaging new areas, but avoid damaging areas that have already been impacted. Because I can't help but think, yeah, okay. They're worried about the sound impacts of embedding these into the.
Bedrock. Well, an oil rig is drilling, like there are things out there in the ocean that are already doing all of that stuff. So is there any logic to saying, well, can we work in partnership there and tie this [00:26:00] thing to that?
Matt Ferrell: I, we did not find anything specifically to address it, but you can kind of read between the lines that a lot of the thinking that some of these companies are doing.
To try to negate those issues are because we do know some of the issues that stem from undersea drilling and the frequencies that are produced. They're trying to find ways to, Hey, can we do this in a way that doesn't add crazy frequencies that are just gonna like shock the wildlife? Right? So the fact that they're even considering trying to find.
Methodologies to address those concerns to me is a sign that they're aware mm-hmm. That other industries have this problem and they don't wanna replicate that problem. Right. Which is a good thing. But at the same time, even the solutions they're coming up with have never been done before. So they have to be done and then studied and see how it works.
So. When it comes to the ocean, the one thing I've learned is we know nothing like we know. Yeah. Very little about what's going on there. Like there's the mining [00:27:00] company that was like, Hey, we found this endless supply of battery minerals on the bottom of the ocean floor. So we're gonna design these things that go out there and just dredge it all up.
Well, guess what they discovered is that, oh, those little nodules are gonna take up are essential for life at the bottom of the ocean. Oh, wow. It's just like, okay. Yeah. Way to go, guys. Um, yeah. Okay. Yeah. We have to be high around. Yeah, we have, we have to be very careful about when we go into the ocean and what we mess with there, because we still don't completely understand what's even going on.
Sean Ferrell: Think the good news is though, that they actually had that conversation. I. Yes. They actually figured that out.
Matt Ferrell: Yes, because, well, the mining company didn't, the mining companies down, not to go on a tangent. Yeah. They're like pretending it's not an issue. It's, it's researchers and scientists that have discovered this connection and are basically like saying, please stop, please stop.
And the mining company's just going, Hey, look what we can do. It's right. And they're doing it in international waters. So it's getting them to stop what they're doing is gonna be very [00:28:00] difficult. It's a concern. Oh good. Highly concerning. All
Sean Ferrell: right. I just had to ask questions. Press me. Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Sorry.
Sean Ferrell: You mentioned in your video that Ireland has a project that is underway.
Yeah. Are there other places that are right behind Ireland's heels on this that are going to have similar, similar projects starting up in the next few
Matt Ferrell: years? I would say pretty much Europe. Like if you just think about. Ireland UK and then the the coastline countries of Europe. There's a lot of things happening in that region around this stuff.
So they're definitely kind of taking the lead here, which is really exciting to see the EU and the UK kind of like kind of taking the lead on all this kinda research. Of course, you look down in Australia and it's like, Hey guys. He, he seemed like a perfect location to try [00:29:00] this stuff. What are you doing?
So there's other areas that are not doing anything basically, and they really should be.
Sean Ferrell: And is this something that is tied to the oceans in particular as opposed to seas? Like I'm wondering about the Mediterranean. Is the Mediterranean not? Does it not have the same level of motion that would benefit from this kind of technology
Matt Ferrell: motion from the ocean?
Sean Ferrell: I don't know. Well, we're talking about the, the, not the motion on the ocean, but the seas of the seas. Does that make sense?
Matt Ferrell: Yeah. In the, in the research that we did, in nothing specific about that. I would assume that you absolutely could, as long as there's enough churn and waves. Yeah, there's nothing to say that you couldn't do it in a great lake.
You know what I mean? It's like, it's right. As long as there's enough currents and eddies and waves happening, you could do stuff like this. You'd probably get less energy output, which right, of course, would equate to how much cost with [00:30:00] return investment is, which might make it not viable just from a cost perspective, but Right.
Technically, there's no reason why you couldn't do stuff.
Sean Ferrell: So, so far the list of. Possible locations, oceans, seas, and great lakes. Not okay lakes. Great lakes. They have to be great lakes. Sean, finally there was this from Ben. Hell, when to end on a high note. My only complaint is that they didn't make it look like a rubber ducky.
Thank you, Ben. I agree a hundred percent rubber duckies or alternatively emoji faces, they are giant yellow balls. Put a bunch of emoji faces on there. I wanna see a ship going and somebody with binoculars looking at the ocean in front and stopping and going. I think I just saw a winky face. Mind blown.
Mind blown. Thank you, listeners for your comments. We appreciate them. As you [00:31:00] can tell, they do drive the show. Don't forget, leave a comment here also, like, subscribe, share with your friends. Those are very easy. Free ways for you to support the show. And if you'd like to support us more directly, you can click the join button on YouTube or you can go to still tbd fm.
Click the join button there. Both of those ways allow to throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts. And then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of talking about, yes. I'm gonna say it one more time. The motion of the ocean. Thank you everybody for taking the time to watch or listen.