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Matt and Sean talk about regenerative braking, and how it might power more than vehicles.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, The Most Overlooked Clean Energy Source… Is Under Your Feet https://youtu.be/Aubi3cK8Ym0?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
Matt and Sean talk about regenerative braking, and how it might power more than vehicles.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, The Most Overlooked Clean Energy Source… Is Under Your Feet https://youtu.be/Aubi3cK8Ym0?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
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.
Still to be Determined. We're talking about breaking news. Sorry. Oh, Sean, I'm, oh my God, I'm really, yeah, I'm really, you should be ashamed. Sorry.
Whew. Hi everybody. I'm Sean Ferrell. 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 and my brother is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which of course takes a look at emerging tech and its impact our lives.
And today we are here to talk about Matt's most recent, which is technically breaking news. It's about regenerative breaking. That's right. So. Yeah, I'm, I'm that type of person who laughs, pun, and is, and regular viewers of Matt's videos know, Matt's a guy who likes a pun too, so, oh, love my puns. I don't know why he's groaning at me.
I give everybody the audience approval to groan at me. But Matt, that's a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black. Anyway. Yep. Yes, it's, we're gonna be talking about Matt's most recent, which is the most overlooked clean energy source is under your feet. But before we get into that, we always like to revisit what you've had to say about our previous conversation.
And in this one episode 2 73, we were talking about manure and other bio waste and. There was this comment from George that popped out at me because this is something I think we've touched on in the past, but I don't think we've had a recent conversation about it. And I wondered if this is something maybe you have circling back around in the future.
George writes, I know that at some point, ammonia was proposed as a viable storage for H two. In other words, hydrogen. They were concerned that the vast majority of currently available ammonia is generated from petroleum. Meanwhile, we literally flushed down the drain a crap ton. Well done, George. Yes, just to later complain about polluting the environment.
So if we want some green H two, maybe we should do this shamanic ritual and start doing the peepee dance.
Yes, Matt. Thank you. George. Big picture, just some like major headline responses to this. Where is H two as an energy storage mechanism? Where is ammonia in that? Has there been anything in the vein of what George is describing as a part of your research for your most? For that video that we had a conversation around all this about.
Oh yeah, there, there's definitely still movement around hydrogen even though there's a lot of people that kind of go, why are we bothering with that? It doesn't make sense. It's not efficient, it's not cost effective. It's just stupid. It's still, there's still plenty of people looking into this, but there is, what's interesting to me is this a little tangent.
There's more and more, uh, papers I've been seeing bubble up over the past, just few months around hydrogen making the scientific case. That it's stupid. It's really, that's me, Parar. That's me paraphrasing it. And the reason they're saying that it's, they're not saying stupid. It's me reading between the lines, but it's them breaking down.
How, like the costs, how it works, how we make it, what the CO2 impacts actually are from the whole manufacturing process. Even if we do go green on hydrogen production, all the kinda logistics around it. And then it's like, and then when you compare it to what we can do with just solar panels and wind and these other technologies, it's like, it just, they're making a pretty compelling case for, uh, why.
Right. And my response to that is. You're a hundred percent correct, but there's different use cases, right? There's places in the world where you need to, you need to be able to transport that energy, like gasoline, like be able to take it from point A and put it into a place where it's not easy to do wind or easy to do solar or you, you need to be able to be able to transport that energy in ways that is not just across power lines and things like that.
So there are use cases for it. Uh. It's definitely not gonna be the big player that it was promised to be 20, 30 years ago, but that's a little tangent coming back to the ammonia side. There's a lot of stuff around that still happening today. Ammonia really is a good, safe way to transport and store hydrogen because hydrogen is so, it's so small.
Mm-hmm. It escapes the tiniest of cracks, uh, and it's really hard to contain. Right. Ammonia is much easier to contain and it's very safe. So it's like. It's, it's something that are, is being explored. There's plenty of papers coming out on that. Plenty of development around that as well. So it's like, I've been thinking about doing a video on where things currently stand on that.
I've been thinking about doing a video on those research papers. I said basically saying like stupid because I, it's fascinating. Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating.
I'm. I wonder if there is, is there a component to research like that that is changing from being a flat out, here's what the research did, here's how we conducted it, here's what the results were.
Do they include an aspect which is possible ways of harnessing this? Known use cases today versus what might be speculated in the future, or is it just end of research? Here's what we wanted to do, here's what we found, period.
That's it. It's, it's that. It's typically the researchers are looking at a very specific use case or a very specific scenario, and they analyze the hell out of it and come to a conclusion, full stop.
They're not talking broad spectrum and stuff like that. So it's, it's, it's very narrow and focused. But when you look at this paper said this about hydrogen, this one looked at this other use case and it came to a very similar conclusion that that one did do, did. So you start looking at all these research papers coming out and like collectively it's kind of damning.
Um, so it's, it's, it's interesting to see that there's this kind of like. I'm perceiving it. Maybe it's not accurate, but I'm perceiving kind of like a little surge of negativity in the scientific community around hydrogen.
Right. And I wonder how it would compare to research that was conducted in some of the other veins that we've talked about in the past where products are now reaching market, which are based on research from decades ago.
I wonder if this potentially has the same at the current moment, invisible fruit that might be harvested at a much later date, where if could a certain hurdle that makes it, oh, this is so inefficient because of this one thing in 20 years, if somebody makes a breakthrough in a certain area. I, I'd be curious to see what some of those possible developments. Uh, at that point, I don't, I'm not gonna promise the audience that we'll still be doing this podcast, but if we are 20 years from now, 20 years from now, I'll be well into my seventies.
Yes,
it will be the, uh, still having a Heartbeat podcast at that point. Um, the still geriatric podcast.
Yeah. Still, still gumming our mashed potatoes as we talked about technology. That's right. I, I can't even imagine what that would look like. I'm now envisioning a podcast with our parents talking about how to use a phone. Um,
it's gonna be a wild ride in 20 years people tune in then. I'm gonna move on now to Matt's most recent. The main reason I'm doing that so quickly, very often I like to share two or three different, uh, comments from our previous episode, but this week I, I just, hats off to everybody who jumped into the comments on the previous episode just to make poop jokes.
Yes, there's a lot of poop jokes. There
were so many, too many to share, but thank you. As I was scrolling through, like what are we gonna talk about this week? Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Well, that's a lot of poop jokes. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling that. It's more poop jokes. Scrolling. Scrolling. Oh, here's George.
George has a comment. It's about ammonia, so it's, it ends with a peepee joke, but I'm still gonna share it and just say thank you everybody for taking the time to comment. Commenting is greatly appreciated, but we don't have enough time for that crap. Again. Sorry. Onto our conversation about Matt's most recent.
This is about regenerative braking. The most overlooked clean energy source is under your feet. And I gave Matt no heads up on what this conversation was gonna look like. So, Matt, get ready. Buckle up. Strap myself in. Strap yourself in hold onto something solid. I've got one comment here from AntoninKral.
That felt like it was indicative of a great trend in the comments. So let's read his comment and then you can address his comment specifically, and I'll have a follow up question that will give the broader community of commenters may be a response. So aAntoninwrites, I'm confused. Regenerative braking is nothing new for trains and subways.
For example, Prague Metro was rolling support in the nineties and since 2010, all their trains fully support regenerative braking. They don't do things like direct EV charging, but reuse use it directly in the grid. Metro is DC. I believe they can directly use about 80% of the energy regenerated.
Interesting. Prague being DC that's something we've talked about in the past, DC being a electric grid option that has certain benefits over AC and that there are some areas that already are or are moving toward that as a means of storing energy. But I wanted to share this comment specifically. I remember, and this is not to call out an Antonin or any of the commenters multiple times in this video, you point out this is not new.
Yep. When you conducted your research to this, you angle on this as far as regenerative braking and the newness of this tech. Is about the application toward providing energy to the wider AC grid.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't distinguish AC or DC I would just say Right. To the wider grid and to other use cases.
Yes. Right,
right. Yes. So the idea that you end up with, like you have in your video, a couple of lovely shots professionally done, I am sure, of New York City subway stations the first of all, make the stations look really nice. Uh, false advertising. False advertising. In some cases. One of your shots was of a station I was just in yesterday and oh boy, uh, had a wildly different experience there yesterday than your video depicted of people getting on for business, business, business.
And I was standing there like, okay. How quickly can I get out of the station if I need to flee? Um, I love it here in New York. So the purpose behind all of this is if New York City were in some way able to take advantage of this, it would provide, given the number of trains New York City has, it would help not only the train system itself in the form of providing electricity back into the system that is using it to such a high degree.
Could provide a cheap alternative source of power. Not to take over power production for New York City, but just be a way to harness energy. If this is the point of your video, gimme a thumbs up. Taking advantage of a energy that is currently not being for used for anything even close to what this technology could provide.
There we go. That's what I wanted to see. Two thumb, two thumbs up, buddy. Yeah, so the quickly, if you wanna give a response to like all the commenters who were jumping in saying, well, this isn't anything new. I've seen this before. There are cities that do this. There's regenerative braking is captured in this particular use case.
And it goes back into the trains and, and some commenters even saying, why would you want to take it out of the train system like this is like. To give you an opportunity to give a kind of footnote to your video of like, this doesn't seem to be a look at this brand new technology. To me, it looks like this is a technology that is bringing a lot of nuance into particular use cases that cities might want to take advantage of.
Bingo. Okay. You just hit right on the nose, Sean. I was hoping that would come across when I said numerous times. This is not a new idea. This has been around for decades. It is in every EV it's been used in other subways and things like that already. Um, it's used in elevators, in buildings. Yeah. And the elevator goes down, spin a little dynamo, you know, generator, get a little extra juice out of it and goes right back into the building.
This is something that's being done more and more and more, and that's why I wanted to make this video of like, there are so many ways that we can get power out of the systems we already have in place and we can use them in new and creative ways. And so this was more exploring around what Spain is doing beyond just, oh, you take that energy and put it right back into the train.
Well, you could put it into the train station. Oh, you, you could put it into EV chargers that are above the train station. You could, it was more about exploring the different kind of boutique ways that cities could take advantage of these systems and what Barcelona is doing that's unique and why other cities are very interested in what they're doing because other cities are not doing what they're doing.
Right. So like it's great that, uh, Antonin brought up Prague. It's a great example, but it, I don't know exactly how they're using their electricity other than just putting into the grid. There are more interesting creative ways that cities can take advantage of this. And part of the reason I think some of this has never happened, I brought it up in the video, it's costs.
Some cities have experimented with this, and then it goes nowhere else because, oh, to retrofit the New York subway would cost God how much money. It's like, are you gonna make that money back based on these technologies and the applications that we've used in the past in these other places? And then here comes the newest iteration of this in Spain, and it's like, oh.
This is starting to look more appealing now it looks like we might be able to get more money out of the investment. And so that could potentially cause this to kind of catch on more and become a real thing. 'cause right now it's not widespread in a really meaningful way. And that's kind of what the video is about.
It's like how can this become more of a meaningful thing?
You mentioned the cost of infrastructure development and the return on investment, which is something that caught Robert Van Barlingen's eyes. Robert wrote 7.8 million Euro, honestly doesn't seem all that much compared to how much such big engineering projects usually cost.
Additionally, a 20 to 25% return on investment is mainly amazing. Honestly, a no-brainer. This is not to say that any kind of numbers that would apply to one particular use in one particular city are across the board. Correct. As you mentioned, like New York City, I can't even imagine, like we're currently in the process of getting new train cars.
That has been a tremendous undertaking. And the cost Yeah. Of all of that and the, and the way that, um, not all municipalities operate along the same fundraising mechanisms either. So you end up with like New York City. The MTA is a very special monster. It is a public, private, quasi independent governmental sort of corporation that is operating as a utility for a profit making goal. Yeah. It's always like a number of years ago, there was a scandal around the MTA, which was the city of New York, discovering that there were potentially two sets of books. The ones they showed the city, and then the real set. Oh man. That was decades ago at this point. So it's, it's the question of like, how much does a thing cost and the MTA says a number.
Then everybody looks around and says, do we believe them? Like, how do we feel about that? Are we gonna go with it or not? So it's like the idea that New York City would try to implement something like this, I can't even imagine what the cost would be versus a different municipality where the funding mechanism is just straightforward government public money.
Well, I mean, that's one of the reasons I made the video. There's p the thing that as the longer I've been doing this. There's more and more people in these industries that watch my videos than I realized, and I hear back through the grapevine from people, and so one of the thoughts was making a video like this, maybe this would raise awareness to somebody who's involved in some city with the mass transit system, and they may not have been aware that this kind of stuff was happening, right?
It might inspire them to go, Hey, maybe I'll look into that. And whether it works or not for them, who knows, right? But maybe they just go look into it. And like you just said, New York has this, did this major investment to get new trains. That would be the perfect time to see about like, well, since we're getting new trains anyway.
Yeah. How much would it cost to get the regenerative braking system as part of those new trains and just kind of piggyback on those costs, and maybe it will cost less to implement this system than trying to retrofit it five years later. Right. So it's like. There might be smart ways for cities to take advantage of this if they're thinking about it.
And the question, the thing I was finding when we were digging into this is most people aren't thinking about this. Right? So it's like, just think about it. Just consider it. Yeah.
It also goes into those companies that are making these trains. Does it become, yeah, the private sector that drives it. If the private sector is going to cities and saying, oh, you're looking for new train cars.
We've got these that actually generate power for themselves. That is a, and these trains
will cost you 25% less to run
than the competitor. Right.
It's like, that could be, that may be a, that
may be a component of it as well.
Yeah.
Uh, which leads to a question from Dan Top who wrote in wanting to know more about.
In Dan's mind, it seems like, it's like, well, you put something in one end and then something else comes out the other end, and I think that there's a lot more loops and whirly gigs in the middle than Dan was aware of. Yeah. But I don't know what those loops and whirly gigs are. Perhaps you do. Dan writes, I don't understand.
The train is using more energy than it could possibly recover while braking. So why doesn't the energy just get used by the train, pushing it elsewhere to then just suck up more to the train? Seems less efficient than using it directly. I imagine this is largely about energy capture and storage because Yes, Dan, you're right.
The train uses a million energies to move and then can capture 500,000 energies when it stops. But if it doesn't have a place to put those 500,000 energies. It's not gonna be able to use 'em. Am I in the right ballpark with my terminology? So well
used? I was, I was about say your terminology should become the standard.
We should just call it energies. It's, I am all for, not watts, not Joules.
When we're talking like, I like to talk about this stuff, but I can only talk about it in the most man on the street, layman of ways. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm never gonna remember like giga joules. I just like, I'm not like watt per hour, like, okay, what?
But I can talk about like, yeah, that's a battery and that's an energy conduit and it's providing energies. So let's talk about the energies, man. Let's do it. Yeah. Yeah. So is it, does it boil down to like, yes. Storage is not easily possible without weighing down the train with a battery that then makes it inefficient to run the train in the first place?
Correct. So it's like if you're trying to retrofit trains to do what he's just suggesting, and there are people doing this, there are electric trains, not subways, it's electric trains that are being developed right now that do exactly this. They have onboard battery storage systems and they can re, they can capture, I mean, think about a freight train that takes like miles to stop.
Yeah. That's a lot of energy that that train is generating as it's coming to that stop. If it could store it on board and then use that to kind of start back up again. You've just dramatically reduced how much energy it takes to run that train. That is something that is happening, but that's also a big heavy battery pack or storage system that you're working with the trains to store that energy.
Just like a way EV works where what we're talking about here is it's a your standard subway car and you've got regen braking that's just pumping those electrons back through the same system that's already existing. Right, so there's no heavy battery packs, heavy storage systems, extra equipment you're having to install, so it keeps the costs low to put this in, right.
And then you're also then just using that energy elsewhere immediately, right? So it's either going to the grid or it's going to somebody's battery pack and that EV charger. So it's like, right, it's, it's, it's about the efficiencies and doing this as cost effectively and cheaply and easily as possible.
That's what this solution was, right?
Yeah. Finally this from Jopo, who proves that great minds think alike. Jopo weighed in to say, I wasn't aware they were doing this. Matt is now providing us with Breaking news. Yes, Joe Poe. That's how we started it and that's how we're ending this program with breaking news.
Listeners, viewers, what did you think about this conversation? What did you think about my terrible puns? What did you think about the quickness with which I'm speaking right now? Let us know in the comments. Your comments are appreciated. They help drive the content of the show and then they help Matt when he is planning out for future episodes in the main mothership, which is of course Undecided.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment, sharing with your friends, subscribing, little bell icon I think. YouTube talk. I don't know, like belly welly, like whatever you're supposed to do with that thing. Ring that bell,
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Don't forget to subscribe. All of those are great ways for you to support us. If you'd like to support us more directly, you can go to still TBD fm. Or you can click the join button on YouTube. Both of those ways allow you to throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the welt, and then we get down to talking about what we do when we're running through the subway.
Thank you so much everybody, for taking the time to watch and listen, we'll talk to you next time.