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Matt and Sean talk about the current status of perovskite solar progress, plus your responses to our previous episodes.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, What Solar’s 2025 Breakthroughs Mean for 2026 https://youtu.be/FffKMMnisu4?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
Matt and Sean talk about the current status of perovskite solar progress, plus your responses to our previous episodes.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, What Solar’s 2025 Breakthroughs Mean for 2026 https://youtu.be/FffKMMnisu4?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.
Sean Ferrell: Welcome to Still To Be Determined. This is, of course, the podcast that follows up on Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. We have a nice treat for you today. We're going to talk about something different. We're talking about Perovskite again.
Matt Ferrell: Again.
Sean Ferrell: Again. Again. We talked about perovskite two weeks ago.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: And here we go talking about perovskite again. But this time around, we are doing something a little different because Matt's most recent video about perovskite is effectively an end of year roundup. He's talking about all the different perovskite introductions that have happened in 2025 and giving a summary of where have we seen progress? Where have we seen things stalling? And is perovskite becoming a material that is meeting the promise that it's been making for years? And for regular viewers of this channel and of Matt's main channel, you know that there have been a lot of promises made. And we'll talk a bit about whether or not some of those are being met. But before we get into that, we always like to revisit what you've had to say about our previous episodes. So on we go now with episode 290. Matt, I didn't even introduce you yet. Matt is, of course, here. He is with us on every episode. So, Matt, how are you doing today?
Matt Ferrell: I'm doing good. I wish I had recording technical stuff. Yeah, I wish I had been recording the pre show because Sean's recording in a different place than he normally records. And it was quite the show getting the camera set up to get this.
Sean Ferrell: It was a little bit like setting up for a recording while riding a BMX bike down a mountain trail. It was.
Matt Ferrell: Exciting.
Sean Ferrell: In theory, this could work. But will it? And regular viewers of this channel will probably recognize that. Well, Matt's setup is inherently much higher quality than Sean's setup. Sean's kind of Jerry rigging things much of the time. So Sean is currently working off of a laptop, where my laptop screen is a full foot below my camera, which means that as I look at you now, those of you watching us on YouTube and looking at my smiling face, I am having to ignore the screen in order to make this kind of eye contact, which, of course makes it look like Matt and I are having a nice conversation. But when I actually look at the screen in order get to, oh, let's say what we're going to talk about, I'm going to look like this. So my apologies, everybody. As my voice is probably going to change as now I'm aimed more directly at the microphone and my eyes drop. Let's just say Sean's happy 2025 is ending. Sean's happy that the new year is upon us, and more importantly, Sean is happy that he's taking some days off from work so that he can catch his breath.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: On we go to our regularly scheduled program. As I mentioned, we always like to dive into the mailbag and see what you've all had to say about our previous conversation. So we're looking at episode 289 now, and right at the top, I spotted this one from George William, who said about desalination and energy production and where they strangely unexpectedly overlap and provide some benefits for each other. George Williams said, I just want to say that Salt, fresh water, power opportunity is the first power technology that exists in the world that I had not heard of until a YouTube video. Thanks for informing me. So, Matt, my question to you is, when you found the information about this, how under the radar did you feel like it was flying? And have you heard from anybody else in either the technosphere that you have a finger on or in the YouTube sphere? As far as how widely known is this technology, is it something that is just not on people's radar? Do you think it will increase in the attention it's getting as a result of those places that are going to try and utilize the technology? Or do you think it's having some kind of not PR problem? But is it in a growth stage where it's gonna take a little while for it to get traction and for it to get the attention that maybe it deserves?
Matt Ferrell: I think it's one of those things of anybody that knows what this is and is aware of it. I'm speaking directly to all of you that know this stuff. You are rare. Cause it's like most people have never heard of this, didn't know this was a thing. Uh, even people that are aware of like the energy sector, some people I've heard from, they were surprised by this. It seems to be flying under the radar, which is part of the reason I wanted to make the video. Because when I saw it, I was just like kind of dumbfounded of that. Wait, that seems to come out of nowhere, like, because there's places actually doing it. But the people that do know about it typically either live in the area where they experimented with it or they had a professor that taught them about it in college. It's like there it tends to be the people that know about it are like in the industry or are just adjacent to it. So I don't know why that is. My hunch is because it just hasn't been a really viable technology until now where there's companies actually starting to figure out how to make it kind of net positive for energy energy generation. So I think that's part of the reason that we're only starting to kind of see it bubble up to the level of people like us that are not in the industry but are like interested in what's happening. So I think that's why we're seeing it. I think it's still going to be a number of years before we start seeing it like really kind of catch on to a bigger section of the market. As far as awareness not rollout. I'm just talking about the awareness. I still think we're in the very early days.
Sean Ferrell: Do you think that one of the things that might be keeping this off of people's radar is that right out of the gate the cost of implementing this would be higher. I can't imagine that it would be as easy to start a project around desalination nation power production. I've imagined solar farm, other means of setting up a new energy production facility would be easier and more easily understood right out of the gate as opposed to something like this.
Matt Ferrell: It's going to be more expensive up front for these early adopters. But also I think another important factor to remember is utilities are going to be risk adverse. It's like here's a new technology we still don't understand like the long term maintenance issues, long term aspects of the technology. So why would I do that when I know solar has been proven? So I could just build out a solar farm or I could build a lot of different type of technology that we know that's also cheaper. I think that's going to be a major thing for this. Specifically, I think the adoption is going to mainly happen around desalination. It's like if you have to build a desalination plant, you have to do it. It's like I think there's going to be more likelihood that you would try something like this in those areas because why not? It's like you could potentially reduce how much energy it takes to make the fresh water. So I think that's probably we're going to see it first, but I don't think you're going to see people clamoring to be the first on board this new technology.
Sean Ferrell: Otherwise yeah, it seems like it would make sense for the early adopters to be people who were looking to take hold of the desalination side of things as opposed to the power production side of things.
Matt Ferrell: Correct. Yeah, exactly.
Sean Ferrell: There was this comment from Colin Kaiser who says sure hope you to do a follow up on the deep hot rock geothermal. Now that the Eavorsystem in Gerietsreude, Germany is putting electricity onto the grid. Have you been paying attention to the hot rock geothermal? I can't.
Matt Ferrell: It's also referred to as super hot rock geothermal.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, yeah. It's like it suddenly I'm picturing hair metal bands from the 80s days that are best left behind us. I'm picturing that. But this is something we've talked about geothermal in the past. Is this a energy production plant that you were aware of and have you got any plans to revisit this kind of tech in the future?
Matt Ferrell: It is on the roadmap to revisit at some point and I have, I don't know the details on this, but I am aware of this plant and there's others that are starting to spin up as well. Super hot rock geothermal is kind of like looked at as the, the essential. You need the super hot rock to make geothermal truly worth it money wise, longevity wise, energy production wise. So there's a lot of attention on that. And even here in the US there's a lot of attention on super hot rock geothermal. So it's going to be definitely something I'll revisit. It's just when I'm kind of waiting for more of a critical mass of things to kind of spin up and happen. And one of those companies I've mentioned.
Sean Ferrell: Before, he needs a critical mass of hot rock.
Matt Ferrell: That belongs on the T shirt, Sean.
Sean Ferrell: It does.
Matt Ferrell: The company Quaise that has that death ray as I like to call it. And they don't like me saying that, but I keep saying that the death ray that they can basically bore into the earth allows them to get deeper, which means they can get to the super hot rock. They're not the only company doing that. There are other companies doing something very similar. I think those companies and those technologies are going to make this far more common in more places in the world. So I'm kind of waiting for more to kind of like more shoes to drop. I don't know what mixing my metaphors here, you know what I mean? I'm waiting for more of that critical mass of things that are happening around it to make it more. That are helping to make it more real and more immediate. Than what we're seeing right now.
Sean Ferrell: Right. Speaking of Quaise’s laser that allows them to bore into the Earth. If you give me a subject that I care about, and enough coffee, I'll bore you into the Earth as well.
Matt Ferrell: So, ladies and gentlemen, a bit of.
Sean Ferrell: A conversation last week, you can.
Matt Ferrell: You can see where we get. Where I get my sense of humor. Yeah, there you go.
Sean Ferrell: It's a good cup of coffee. So we had a bit of a conversation unexpectedly about suggested plans for facing global warming.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: By finally, finally blocking out the sun. This is a real conversation that Matt and I had because other people are having real conversations about that. We aren't proponents of this.
Matt Ferrell: Nope.
Sean Ferrell: At least I'm not.
Matt Ferrell: Nope.
Sean Ferrell: But we did talk about it briefly. We talked about people talking about it. And there was this in the comments from the Weathered Elder. I love this username. So, Weathered Elder, thank you for being here. The weathered Elder jumps in to say, instead of blocking out the sun, we could create some kind of mitigating layer above the Earth that controls how much sun we get at a time. We could call it the ozone layer. I see what you're doing there, Elder.
Matt Ferrell: Sick burn.
Sean Ferrell: Sick burn. Just to like, it is intended to be a joke. It is intended to be satirical.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: But just to get down to what the intention here is, the. The ozone layer, from my understanding, has actually been repairing itself because we got rid of some of the chemicals that were involved in destroying it. So that's not what this is about. This is literally about we have a hot energy coming out of space. Why don't we just put something in the way and then we will stop heating up the surface of the planet. The ozone layer wouldn't be involved in that.
Matt Ferrell: Well, the other thing is, I almost made a video about this. It's geoengineering is what we're talking about. I'm not a fan. Not a fan of geoengineering because there's so much unknowns with all the ideas that are being proposed. It's like we have gotten into the place we're currently in because we didn't think about what we were doing. And then to intentionally do something where we're like, we don't completely understand ramifications of this, so let's do it. It's like that's just doubling down on the same problem. But there are proposals to basically put basically like gases, like particulate matter deliberately into the atmosphere at the high levels. That would not be. They're not pollutants, but they're little particulates that would block and filter the sunlight and would help with the greenhouse effect that's happening and help to slow down that process. And there was a video that Hank Green put out a while back, maybe a year ago now, where there was. They noticed that the oceans were rising in temperature dramatically over the past year at a rate they weren't expecting. And they figured out the correlation was that new rules had gone into effect to reduce how much of the super polluting fuels that tanker ships were allowed to use. So they were going greener, which meant they were putting out fewer pollutants. And they discovered those pollutants were actually reducing the amount of sunlight hitting the ocean with, which was actually slowing down the heating process. And by cleaning up the fuel source, they actually ended up heating it up faster because now the atmosphere is cleaner, some more sun is hitting the ocean. This is what I'm talking about. It's like we should not be doing geoengineering by accident or on purpose because we fully don't understand how all these things play together the way they do. So it freaks me out, Sean. It freaks me out.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, yeah. So would you suggest that this should not be called the ozone, but should be called the no zone? Finally, there was this the best worst comment from Fr, who wrote in to say in our discussion about SMRs, oh my God, I got halfway through this before I realized that SMR wasn't referring to steam methane reforming.
Matt Ferrell: Nice.
Sean Ferrell: I share that. To ask this question. Steam methane reforming, is that a real thing?
Matt Ferrell: It is.
Sean Ferrell: Okay, okay. On now to our discussion about Matt's most recent. This is Perovskite wins. This is what solar's 2025 breakthroughs mean for 2026. And as I mentioned at the top, we've talked about perovskites a lot. We've talked about them just recently, but this conversation was more about a temperature check across the board. So overall, Matt, just to reframe what you said at the beginning of this video, you had called Perovskite a major player in solar tech. A year ago, in 2024, you said that this is what's coming. Did it meet, beat or not quite meet your expectations for the year?
Matt Ferrell: Overall, I think it did. But the problem with me saying that is everybody, including myself, is impatient and we want things faster. And so it's like, even though it's still not something that I could put on my roof today and it'd be awesome if I could, the amount of progress it made this past year is kind of astonishing for Brand New technology, it's absolutely making progress, and there's some really exciting things happening, but there's definitely an impatience out there of like, okay, enough already. Wake me up when it's finally here. It's like, well, it kind of is here. It's just not available for you personally yet. But it is available to utilities and things like that right now. So it's. So for me, I would give it a good grade for this year of still making some really excellent progress.
Sean Ferrell: In the comments, there were people who were talking about how much we've all been talking about this. Like this comment from Cassius Drake, who says, not sure if anyone ever actually saw it, but I actually did send this in as a suggestion for a video a couple of months ago linking the article Matt mentioned. So I'm glad it ended up happening. This also feels like a good time to bring up Drake's Law again. This really does feel like magic, and clearly people are having a hard time accepting it for that reason. I do really like Matt's thoughts on how this is similar to heat pumps and in that they seem to break physics, but only because they aren't actually doing the thing you think they're doing. So I want to touch on the. This is magic, and they're not doing what you think they're doing. What do you think people think? First of all, do you think most people understand what solar panels are doing? And then do you think that people would understand how perovskite plays a part? And in the research that you talked about in your video, you pointed out that there are some results involving perovskites that surprised the researchers because they didn't anticipate things would jump past certain barriers, and then perovskites come in and they help break that barrier. Is this an across the board. Is this a case of people kind of throwing things at the wall and not knowing what to expect? Or is this. The researchers are following paths that have been paved by earlier research and they get a glimmer of what might happen, but they're surprised when it exceeds their expectations. So that's a lot of questions all at once. Let's take a step back and just say, first of all, do you think most people know how solar panels work?
Matt Ferrell: No. Full stop. Like, why would they? It's like, you know, this big black rectangle makes electricity. That's all they know. That's. That's it, right?
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, it's. I would say it's similar for me to how batteries work. Yeah. I take this. I put it into my remote control and I make the TV do things and when it doesn't work, I do what everybody does. I take it out, reverse it, put it back in, and then maybe it works. And if it doesn't do that, I have to throw it away and replace it. That's the extent of my battery knowledge. And I say that in episode 290 of a tech podcast. I'm the layman, I'm the Joe on the street. So that's my role here. So onto the second stage of my multi part question. Is this a case of researchers accidentally coming across results or is this a case of them following paths of earlier research and being surprised at the results but having anticipated certain results?
Matt Ferrell: The first thing you brought up does happen and it's always fun when that happens. This case, I don't think that's what's happening. I think it's the second thing you just raised where they're following the path that previous research and results have shown potential progress and they're going down that path. But they were surprised at how good the results were on what they did. So I don't think it's that they thought it was not going to do anything or oh my God, I totally wasn't expecting that. But it outstripped what they were expecting. I think that's more of what happened.
Sean Ferrell: Here is this last part of this conversation is the kind of research that's being done right now, the kind that is the minuscule advancements in products that are on the shelf. We all talk about, oh, do I need to replace my phone because there's a new phone out there? Like, well, is this new model substantially better than last year's model or even the one from four years ago? Because if your phone's working, it's working and then why replace it? Have we reached that stage with solar panels where, yeah, these are small step advancements where the public at large doesn't really need to pay attention to some of the details here and just know that things are getting better? Or is this a substantial. Yeah, this really changes the game in a fundamental way. That is something that will move the needle in a way that will say two years from now, this is a moment people will look back at and say, oh, that's when things really changed.
Matt Ferrell: That's a good question. I think it's a little mix of both. I think they're. Because like when you talk about silicon solar panels, like the kinds I have, the kind I have on my roof, that is kind of like what we're seeing today with processors and computers, it's like there's minuscule changes where they are getting definitely better than the previous generation, the one before that. But it's like small baby steps, fixing small issues here and there and finding ways to get rid of the silver and put something else in its place. And suddenly it's like you get a panel that's a half a percentage more efficient than before and it use. It's cheaper because it doesn't use silver. It's small little incremental steps. But when you're talking about perovskite and specifically tandem cells, which are like silicon layer, perovskite layer on top of it, or something like that, like a tandem cell, that's where I think we're seeing the more not incremental changes, we're seeing the more fundamental changes where. Which are going to make it possible for perovskite to truly enter the market in a substantial way. Because the big thing that's been holding perovskite back is they don't like light and heat and moisture. It's like all the things that they're going to have to put up with, they don't like. And so it's like the research has been focused on ways of making that lifespan longer, like silicon, so they can make it last as long as possible. Because it is so cheap to make and produce, and its efficiency limits are theoretically so much higher than silicon. That's why everybody's chasing it.
And so these tandem cells and these new progresses that are being made right now are answering some of those questions of making it so it will last longer, making it so that it works in tandem with silicon and gives us cheaper, more efficient cells a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. So that's kind of like, I think it's a mix of both, depending on what area of research you're looking at.
Sean Ferrell: There was this comment from Justin Moss that I think is fairly tongue in cheek, but it raises a couple of interesting questions. If billionaires pushing AI invested a third into solar tech, we'd all be driving solar electric cars already.
Matt Ferrell: So.
Sean Ferrell: I'm going to ask two questions related to this. One, the tongue in cheek side of it is solar electric cars. Is that even going to ever be a thing in your perspective? And the second question is, do you agree that there are other places where some of the AI investment could be better utilized right now? And if there is, what would you suggest that it be?
Matt Ferrell: Oh, man, those are two huge questions, Sean, on the solar car thing, I'm going to get comments on this. When I say this, solar cars make no sense right now. I actually did a video on this a few years ago. When you look at like how much energy it can put into your car over the course of a day, a lot of people say, oh, it can put up to 20 miles into this car over the course of a day in ideal circumstances. I live in New England. Right now we're getting like three and a half hours of sunlight a day. It's like if I park that in my driveway right now, maybe at best it gets a handful of miles, like five miles and then it snows. And guess what? It's not producing any energy. So there's so many reasons why solar panel cars don't make sense. Globally, everywhere. And there are companies, I'm not going to name them, but there is a company that has a incredible solar powered car they're bringing up to market. Technically it's not a car. It's, I think it's considered what, it's got three wheels. So it's not considered technically a car. It's called, considered like a motorcycle or something like that. It's, it's weird, but it looks like a big teardrop and it's so specific and unique. It's, it's cool and it's weird and it's going to have a very niche market just because of how weird it looks. Just look at the cybertruck. Nobody's buying the cyber truck. It's not selling well. This, this solar car is going to have a, it's going to sell at gangbusters in Southern California, but you're not going to find people in Michigan buying this thing. So it's a niche market, has a very small use case. So yes, I'm kind of negative on solar panel cars until we get solar panels that are crazy efficient and can actually make a dent. On the other question, the other point that you brought up, which was just refresh my memory again, it was the.
Sean Ferrell: Do you agree that there are other places where billionaires could be investing instead of AI? And if so, where would you suggest? Like just name one tech area where you think like, yeah, if they took a third of what they're putting into AI and put it in this other thing, they could make great advancements and change things.
Matt Ferrell: Energy storage, full stop. I don't care who you are, how much money you got, please invest in energy storage systems. Help, help. Help drive those costs down. They're getting cheaper by the minute and there's a huge opportunity there because it doesn't matter what the energy source is, it's going to benefit everything from natural gas peer plants to nuclear to solar to wind. Energy storage is the future. I think we talked about this before and I think you made a joke of. It's like, what was it? The Graduate. Instead of saying plastics, you're going energy.
Sean Ferrell: Storage against their plastics. Energy storage.
Matt Ferrell: Seriously, that's it. And on that note, there are billionaires investing huge amounts of money in these fields. So it kind of is happening. I wish more would do it.
Sean Ferrell: Dr. Ben. Ben jumped in to say, as an Australian, I've got to have some pride that almost half the advancements were made with the contribution by Aussie universities and research institutes. I agree with you. You should be proud of that. And I also think there is probably a reason why I say that without knowing what that reason might be. But I have some speculative ideas. Matt, do you think that there are reasons why Australia might be leading research in this field around solar perovskite and these kinds of breakthroughs?
Matt Ferrell: 100% Australia has an energy problem. They have for a while and they've gone. It's interesting because their government for a while has been extremely conservative and yet they have been a beacon of light when it comes to solar adoption. In the residential market, the utility market, they've been rolling out massive energy storage systems to help shore up the grid and make their grid more reliable. They're doing huge amounts of hydrogen research and energy storage system research. They're really kind of like pedal to the floor kind of a thing on a lot of this stuff. And that's part of the reason why we see a lot of these Australian universities really kind of making these huge strides is because there's a huge push there, because there's a need for it, a very strong need for it. So the fact that they're doing this doesn't surprise me too much. And also on top of that, they just. News came out recently that like they had the fastest rollout of, can’t remember if it was energy storage or solar. So don't quote me on this. I think it was energy storage, something like a hundred thousand residences in a matter of months. Because there was this huge push this past year to hit a certain goal and they did it. And it's. There's so much we could learn from how Australia is rolling out these technologies and try to apply those same techniques here in the US and other areas of the world. I'm kind of just in awe of what Australia is doing, to be honest. There's a lot of good stuff. There's a lot of good stuff happening, not perfect. I know people are going to chime in saying there's a lot of problems, but there's also a lot to be.
Sean Ferrell: Well, nobody's perfect. That's not what anybody should be aspiring to. And one thing that we've talked about on the show before is don't let let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Look for successes where you can. Here in the US the context has changed dramatically where we now have a brain drain and issues around holding onto research and researchers. In this way, our loss is other people's gain and that gain is good globally. And one of the things that is talked about here in the US context is concern about, well, we could be leaders in this. We could be doing things instead of handing certain aspects of technology and research to other places. We've been the leader in certain things for a long time. And it doesn't mean that it's been kept out of the hands from other people. It means that maybe those people have had to pay more or the access has been slower to arrive, but those changes still can occur. And I think that that's the case with stuff like this. Australia may be leading in this. Congratulations to Australia. And Australia should be very proud of that. And if they can solve a lot of this energy production and storage problems and then share that with the rest of the world, that's a global benefit. So I for one am not going to try and chip away at any one country's ability to have success simply by saying, well, it's not perfect. They didn't do enough for us to say it's been solved. I'm not going to take that angle from Advent Test Inc. The collaboration between next gen materials and graphene is a standout. When cost reductions and lifespan improvements converge like that, it usually signals a tipping point for wider industry adoption. Is that something that you see across the board with graphene in this field in particular, and do you see it in any other tech fields that, that you've been doing research on? Yes.
Matt Ferrell: There is a caveat though, with graphene, because it's like it's still. I don't want to say it's difficult to make because there are companies that are doing it, but it's still. The costs of making it are still too high. So I think the costs are still holding things back to a certain extent. But these kind of collaborations, as Advantage put it, I think is a really good way to put it. It's when you find this, it does create those tipping points where you start to see more adoption happen. And I think we're going to start seeing that more and more around products that have graphene as part of it. And I'm just talking about the gimmicky stuff like here's a pair of headphones with graphene in it. Not talking that.
Sean Ferrell: Like this one from Thunderbuck who says, as with other new tech, these first commercial perovskite panels are going to sell at a premium. But applications that limit panel size make the premium worthwhile. Remote telecom infrastructure is a great pilot application. Is that the trend here is that these panels might be more expensive and have specific use cases that make more sense. And that will be the wedge that starts to drive them into the market and hopefully leads toward more money, more research, and more improvements that make them more widely available.
Matt Ferrell: All new tech is always expensive when it's brand new. And as scaling up and manufacturing happens, the costs come down. So yes, that is true. And the reason it's utility scale first is because that's the deep pockets that can justify the higher cost. If they can produce more watts per square meter of space and they can make the math make sense, they're gonna do it. And it may be way more expensive for us to get it at this point, but by them doing this, they're helping to seed the ground, so to speak, or help spin up those manufacturing plants to produce more and more to drive the cost down so that us little lowly people in our homes can start to afford these amazing new products. So yeah, for perovskite, I think that is 100% the case right now.
Sean Ferrell: Finally, there's this from The Jenns who writes. Renewable energy production and storage has advanced so much in recent years that bureaucracy and regulations around installations have become a larger cost and obstacle than purchasing the hardware itself. Technology moves forward, society moves backward. I don't know if society moves backward, Matt. Do you think it's more. Society kind of stands still and has a bit of hesitation around the newness. I know that regulation and in some cases the calls that sound like overregulation are more about. Well, there may be stuff in the background that the public isn't fully informed on. Like if you just had a bunch of people going out and buying solar panels and plugging them into the grid on their own, that's not going to be a great scenario for the grid. That long term wouldn't have been a sustainable path. So regulation is necessary, but it needs to be smart regulation and it needs to be evolving regulation And I think that's what we sometimes wonder if we're missing in this equation. What do you think about all of that regarding the newness of some of this tech and the regulations around it, and where do you think that it's headed?
Matt Ferrell: I think bringing back up Australia, it's.
Sean Ferrell: Like, okay, we knew we'd get back there eventually.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, there we go. Going back down under.
Sean Ferrell: They have this. Is Matt and I auditioning for Australia to invite us to come visit.
Matt Ferrell: Yes. Or live.
Sean Ferrell: We'll do it. We'll come visit.
Matt Ferrell: They have regulate. The way they regulate and manage the rollout of solar onto their grid system is so much smarter than what we do here in the US and that's part of the reason, not the only reason, but part of the reason it's so much cheaper to get solar in Australia than here. Regulations and restrictions and how they're managed, the bureaucracy of it is necessary to an extent, like you brought up, it's like we do need to regulate it because if we just flooded the grid with everybody, put solar panels in their home tomorrow, it would cause a huge problem. So we have to make sure we're managing it. But you can manage it in a very efficient, streamlined way that reduces the overhead, reduces the overall costs, speeds it up so that a homeowner can get it on their home quickly and not have to wait six months. They're waiting weeks, maybe days. So it's like, there's so much better ways to do this, and Australia is kind of like, again, a poster child for like, oh, look at what they've done. Maybe we should replicate that here. And I do agree with you. I don't think it's society going backwards. Unless you're here in the US right now where they're actively blocking wind turbine installations that were previously approved. That is kind of a step backwards.
Sean Ferrell: That is going backwards.
Matt Ferrell: That's backwards.
Sean Ferrell: That's not regulation. That's politics.
Matt Ferrell: That's true. Politics are holding it back.
Sean Ferrell: Those are different things. Yeah. Regulations are one thing. Yeah, yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Standing still is better. I mean, the way you put it, standing still is the way it is. It's not that we're moving backwards.
Sean Ferrell: So, listeners, viewers, what did you think about this conversation? Was there anything you wish we had brought up that we didn't? Was there anything you saw in Matt's video that you wish he had talked about or that we had talked about here? Jump into the comments, let us know. And please don't forget commenting, liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends. Those are all very easy and very, very appreciated. They really do help the channel. And if you want to support us more directly, you can go to StillTBD.fm, click the join button there, or you can click the join button right here on YouTube. Either way allows you to throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts. And then we get down to the conversations about Matt's most recent and our own most recent. Your comments and your feedback really do support the channel and feed what we talk about. Matt, is there anything that you wanted to share about what's coming up in 2026 on your channel? Just a couple of things to give a teaser for what you might have ahead of you.
Matt Ferrell: I'm going to be going to CES this year, so there's going to be a CES video about all the new tech that's coming out that I caught my eye. Gonna have some videos around comparing different heat pump systems to each other. Like comparing my geothermal to a friend's house who has air source to kind of see which one's better, maybe not better, but which one is the right fit for you potentially to kind of illustrate the difference. You can say better, yeah, mine's better, but yeah, yours is better. But we're not see trying to. His is better. Yeah. So there's going to be a lot more of things like that. I'm going to try to do more comparisons between the different technologies I've been talking about. Hopefully try to put more videos out around tech for your home. Hopefully. That's one of my goals for this next year, is to do more around that as well. So a lot to come.
Sean Ferrell: It's a lot for all of us to look forward to. I look forward to having those conversations with you on this podcast and I appreciate everybody who takes the time to join in, leave comments or just watch and or listen. Thank you so much for being a part of this conversation. We'll talk to you next time.