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

https://youtu.be/82oImZLFY5s

Matt and Sean talk about a solar panel technology that may deserve some time in the sun. Does this solar cell tech deserve the spotlight?

Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, How the Next Big Solar Panel Tech is Already Here https://youtu.be/3GIzZwQw4nc?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ

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Creators & Guests

Host

Matt Ferrell

Host of Undecided with Matt Ferrell, Still TBD, and Trek in Time podcasts

Host

Sean Ferrell

Co-host of Still TBD and Trek in Time Podcasts

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.

On today's episode of Still To Be Determined, we're talking about A

secret solar project. Hi everybody. Welcome to Still to be Determined. I'm Sean 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, my brother is that Matt from Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives.

And today we're going to be talking about Matt's most recent episode, which talks about a solar technology that is flown under the radar, but it may be getting to the spotlight. Before we get into that, Matt,

how are you doing? I'm doing well. I'm still nerding out, crunching numbers, my spreadsheets, Sean, that's still continuing.

Um, also a little bit of a update that I just got, uh, over the last week. This has come up a few times. People have asked me how's the Yoshino solid state battery follow up investigation going. I was just going to ask you about that too. It feels like a hostage situation. Yes, it is going. Um, it's going very slow.

And The, the, the testing that my friend's group is doing at the University of Bath has taken longer than expected. And it's partly because some of the guys that are doing it are like PhD students. And it's like, uh, they're working on their thesis. And so I think they had to like, we had to pause because I had to spend two weeks finishing up my thesis.

And then I turned the thesis in, now I can go back to testing it. So there's like these things that have been happening that have slowed them down. But the last word I got was they should be done with the testing, I think it was the end of last week. I haven't heard word yet, but like I'm hoping this week I'll get the final word from them and then I can do the final follow up I'll have with Yoshino and Tech Insights, which is the other group that did testing.

Those follow ups will not take long, so I'm hoping I can have a final follow up video kind of put together a few weeks after that, so it's probably still a month away, but it takes the time it takes. It's like, I'm not going to rush this out. I know people, some people are eager to hear what I found. But I want to make sure I get it right.

And I want to make sure I'm getting not just double checking. I want to triple check everything. So I want to make sure everything's buttoned up for the follow up video. So unless there's a delay, you're thinking before the end of the year. Oh, it'll be out before the new year. Yes. Yes. I would hope to get out in November.

If it's not November, it'll probably be the very beginning of December. So it's like, it will be out before the end of the

year. On now to our conversation that we usually start off with, focused on our previous episode. This would be about episode 239, in which we were talking about wind turbines. Yes, yet again, promise.

Yes. Solar panels are coming in this discussion, but right now it's back to wind turbines. Start off with this one from Mark Loveless, who said, I am so looking forward to Matt nerding out on the second nerd video, or I mean the second one year later video, of course, he's talking about the one year in Matt's home and.

Matt, I, not to disappoint Mark too much, I can't imagine you doing another year, another follow up video. Like, what was the

second year like? Year three, here we go. I, I did that on my previous house, like two years with Solar, three years with Solar. I don't think I need to repeat that. This will probably be it for the main updates on the house.

Yeah.

I think a video, I think year two would be fine, but by year three, it would just be a video of you with a calculator and a slide rule. Just, yep. Not even talking. Still going. Still making electricity. On the topic of wind turbines, Dave McCracken had this to say, It seems more than a bit hypocritical to complain about the ugliness of wind turbines when things like cell towers are much more ubiquitous across the landscape and no one even takes notice of them.

I agree with you, Dave. This is kind of linked in with my comment during our recording last week in which I said, Anytime anybody builds anything, it's going to impact The view. So to complain that this thing is ugly, but that thing is not is a little, is that actually

true? How do you feel about that, Matt?

I think it's all a matter of perspective, you know, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it's like, there are people that complain about cell towers, but I think for most people, we don't even, it's like, we've, we've blocked them out in our world. It's like, they're just kind of a thing and we don't really pay attention to them.

And I think people focus on the thing that they don't like. So it's like people may not like wind turbines, so they complain about how they look, you know what I mean? It's like, it feels like it's kind of like a This is an extension of their pre existing beliefs on that thing. So it's just, to me, that's how I look at it.

It's like when people complain, ah, it's an eyesore, it's a cool, they probably don't like wind turbines in general.

Yeah. I believe that this cell tower is on the highway between New York and Boston. Massachusetts. I think I've actually seen this in a car ride with you, Matt. There's a cell tower which is at the top of it.

They've masked the fact that it's a tower by putting fake greenery like a As if it's a pine tree and it makes it look like the most poorly done and enormous artificial Christmas tree you've ever seen. It is so laughably bad and I can't help but think that they put it where they did next to such a busy road to basically demonstrate.

This isn't gonna work. Like, it's almost like a public advertising of like, let's just have towers, because this looks dumb.

Yes. It's the most idiotic looking thing ever. And on top of which, it's like, a four, it looks like a four foot tall tree. It stands four times as tall as any tree in the

area.

It's a quarter

of the size.

Yeah, every tree area is half, is not even close to being half as tall. And if I remember correctly, they're not even coniferous. They're not pine trees. So it's like, it just stands up there like as somebody had an idea. There was also this comment from Baba Rudra who, was weighing in on the idea of when you see something and it impacts you at a young age, how it affects you moving forward.

And Matt and I both talked about how we'd been on the cruise ship that we went on with our family. And when we accidentally noticed that they were just dumping garbage into the ocean, it had a pretty strong impact. And Matt connected it to like, Lot, you know, clicking in on environmentalism saying like, this is not okay to do this.

We need, there has to be a better way. Baba Rudra shared this anecdote. It's interesting the things from our earlier lives that really stick with us and the shape and shape where we go. Matt's reaction to the Carnival Garbage Path. When I was in the one environmental science class that was available at my community college back in the early nineties, we went on a field trip to the local sewage treatment plant.

Being close to the shore in New Jersey, treated sewage goes out, outflow pipes into the ocean. Toward the end of the tour, the director of the plant or whomever he was, who it was giving the tour said, the solution to pollution is dilution. To which I laughed at the absurdity of what he said. I said, you're kidding, right?

The director said, no, the ocean is a big place. Once this all gets diluted, it'll be virtually gone. Me. You're effing kidding, right? To which my professor chimed in, Easy Mark or Barbarooja for the rest of you. Director, what else are we supposed to do with it? Me. I don't have an answer to that, but I don't think claiming something is a solution just because you don't have a better idea.

I don't care how catchy your slogan is. Director, when you have an answer, get back to me. Me. Go F yourself. And I walked back to my car and I left. I didn't get credit for the field trip, but it opened my eyes to the closed mindedness of what we as a society have been facing quote forever. I, this is a very, I think this is a very interesting and funny anecdote about.

It literally, the other option here would've been you going on a sewage treatment tour and it ending with, and this is the rug that we put it all under, it literally is not a solution at all. And fingers crossed, this was back in the 90s, fingers crossed they're doing more to this sewage now than they were then.

I hope to God. There was also this comment from Free Healer who Wanted to weigh in on the conversations we've been having about a topic around a forever home. Matt's already talked about his house from the perspective of sustainability, but hasn't yet really visited in detail around a forever home concept for aging in place.

Prehealer jumps in to say, regarding stairs, because we talked about stairs in particular regarding our parents, your parents are likely far more fit and healthy right now because they got a little bit of exercise every time they climbed up and down. My in laws are in a three story home on a hill. You climb twelve feet just to the front door from the garage, and they are still healthy enough to enjoy walks on the beach, through the farmer's market, Light traveling, et cetera, in their late eighties might not be the case for everyone, but stairs seem to have kept them strong.

I think that that is terrific. It is fantastic that your in laws are like that. But absolutely, not everybody is built that way. And for our parents, for whom a one story house was becoming problematic, especially after unexpected illness, a couple of falls, one story was now one story too many. So, yes, absolutely, there are those mobile people who stay mobile well into their 90s, and live alone even, and that's fantastic.

But I think that that is far more likely to be an outlier As opposed to the norm. On now to our conversation. This is from Matt's video on October 8th, how the next big solar panel tech is already here. And a big component of the video is it's almost like this is a shadow tech. It's just been kind of like walking along in the background and nobody's really talking about it, but it has some issues with it.

You talked about efficiency. You talked about cost. You talked about longevity. I wonder too, is there an issue, and maybe there is not an issue within the field itself, but maybe there is a public perception issue for people who are outside of the solar panel industry, with the marketability of something that has, as you point out right at the beginning, Two components that are incredibly toxic.

And you mentioned table salt, you break it into its component parts. Both of those components are terribly toxic, but we're all used to salt and nobody stops to think about salt. And if you told somebody, you know, salt, if you broke it into its components, it's terribly toxic. Most people I would think would be like, Yeah, but this is just salt, but here we have a new technology and it is made out of something even though the components that go into a silicone based tech also has toxicity to it.

Do you think there is something about this new tech that is simply just too much of a ooh, that sounds gross?

I don't know. Um, my initial gut reaction is no. I think the biggest hurdles are efficiency and cost. I think that's most likely what most people are looking at. It's like, what's the biggest bang for the buck I can get?

And right now, Silicon still kind of leads that charge. Um, no pun intended, but well played. Slow clap. Accidental puns. Um, so I don't know if it's the toxicity angle that would be the one thing that's making people go, uh, uh, because I think most people, when they hear silicon solar or cadmium telluride solar, they're kind of going, what the what?

Like they don't even know. I think most people would not even know what the difference is. So, for me, I think it's more about the efficiency and cost, like, oh, like, I could put 20 solar panels on my house versus, you know, 24, like, it might take a few extra solar panels with one versus the other. You know, it means it affects the cost.

I think that's the kind of angle that people would be looking at before thinking about, How toxic is the solar panel? There are people out there that do think along those lines, but I think they're definitely in the minority.

There were also some comments like this one from Annihilated, who said, it always shocks me to see a solar panel manufacturer that doesn't have their solar panels all over the roofs of their buildings.

I guess this is some of the visuals within your Video. And it's a little bit like, uh, if we saw Elon Musk pulling up in a Ford F 150, that wasn't an electric vehicle. It was, it was, it'd be a little like, wait, what's going on here? Uh, I imagine for them in that moment, the building might not have solar panels.

There may be solar panels nearby, but also I questioned, okay, well, their electricity needs, maybe they just would outuse solar panels, what would be potentially the walking the walk, talking the talk

issue here? I think most of it's probably like some of these companies may be doing that thing where you're buying electricity credits from a local solar farm that's offsite or somewhere nearby.

So like it's not on their building, but they're getting solar energy through credits, which is good, but it's like, here's the factory that's making them. Can you just take them off the end of the production line, just walk up to the roof and just put them up there? Because it's like, I don't understand why they're not doing it either.

It's really funny. I love that Annihilated pointed this out because it's caught my eye a few times, but I've never thought to mention it. And I feel like I probably should start calling it out every time we make a video like this. Because what's funny to me is sometimes these companies and people from these companies watch these videos and I would just like it to kind of percolate into those companies and be like, Hey, yeah, this YouTuber, uh, he's making fun of us because we don't have our own panels on our roof.

There's also issues potentially of maybe they don't own that structure. Maybe they're leasing, maybe they're leasing a factory space and don't have the ability to put it could panels on. It could be

that, that could, that could, that actually is a good point. They may not own them, may maybe be leasing, so they don't have the rights to do it, but still come on.

Yeah. You could at least put a mobile solar station nearby. Like, yeah, like 18 wheeler truck with a couple of panels on the roof, like we're running a show. Kyle McKenzie had this to say, I like that the CdTe diversifies the supply chain for solar panels, so that if there is a disruption in silicon production, we have mature alternatives.

This is a Really important issue to weigh in on because when we put all of the eggs in that one basket and we discovered this through the, uh, pandemic years, the shipping woes of getting goods and services, you know, products from one place to another. It turns out that there's only a couple of hubs that are responsible for shipping vast amounts of goods around the world.

And when those places got shut down during the pandemic and continue to struggle to this day, we end up with massive delays that from an outsider perspective, don't make a lot of sense. The ocean is a really big place. How come there's only one path for these things? And I agree. Diversifying the supply chain is a great way to ensure that, well, if something happens in one field, you've got coverage in

another.

Well, here's a more recent example. The hurricanes here in the U. S., we just had two massive hurricanes just weeks apart come through the South and decimate communities. North Carolina got hit really bad. And North Carolina has the most pure form of quartz in the world. It supplies most of the quartz that goes into like the silicon industry for semiconductors, All over the world and they were decimated and it shut down quartz production and it's going to have ripple effects through the industry, depending how long they can, you know, there is a, you know, they do have a backlog supply, so it's not like it just got turned off overnight, but it's like diversifying our supply chains.

It's a good thing. So having an alternative to silicon is a good thing. So it's like the fact that the other thing that I find interesting is that First Solar is a US company and they're mainly produced here and China is just starting to spin up now. So it's kind of like having that diversification of who's making these kinds of solar panels.

It's also a good thing. So it's like, it's, it's good for everybody if we diversify as much as

we can. There was also this from JustaGuy who said, The cool thing about CDTE that you mentioned, they are waste products of two very widely used metals, and they don't really have any other uses. So CDTE panels will always have a supply of raw material for not too much money.

I wonder, is that a good assessment? Is it that these are not going to cost a lot? Or is it if these actually, if these panels do take off, don't the value of those metals

immediately go up as a result? It's, it's supply and demand. It's like if the demand for CDTE solar panels just skyrocketed and there wasn't enough supply of the materials, even though there's no competition for it, it would of course go up.

It's a supply, it's a commodity. So today It may be low prices and if the, you know, if it doesn't ramp at the same rate as the CdTe market, it's like the prices could slowly go up. So it's going to be very wildly based on what's going on in the world, but the assessment is correct. There's like no competition for this material.

It's like the only real industry that's using this is for the solar panels. So that again, back to the diversification is a good thing. It's like, You're not competing against the battery industry and this industry over here and that industry over there that's trying to go for the same exact materials.

It's like, it's basically there just for the taking for the solar panel industry, which is pretty cool.

Yeah. It struck me that if the percentage of CdTe panels globally were to increase to get even close to the percentage of the U. S. market. The cost of their manufacturing materials would go through the roof because to increase globally from 4 percent to anything even close to 10 percent would be such a massive increase in need of production that It would start to, I wonder how much that would impact the comparison between them and Silicon and then that then goes back to the efficiency argument of, it's entirely possible, isn't it?

That this panel could continue to be available for a hundred years, but never get the market share that's even close. Yes. Absolutely. Yep. There was this comment as a counterpoint from Warp 9. 9 who does not like the toxicity of the materials used. Warp writes initial thoughts after the intro. Cadmium is a really nasty substance and also rare so we shouldn't be using it in tech and mining and

we shouldn't be using it in tech, and mining, and disposal chains that risk environmental contamination. Maybe if recycling chains were mandated by law to be maintained by the companies fabricating the tech, and if severe jail, hundreds of millions or billions in fines, penalties for improper disposal, and cleanup crews, storm or disaster damaged arrays, help as well

then maybe. But I still think we should focus on tech that won't poison us so readily. It is important to remember that there are going to be a lot of people out there who are going to have a response to this technology in this way. What would you say to What would you say to Warp9 about this versus other tech, or do you not have a response other than, yes, you're absolutely right.

If this is your, if this is your main focus on this technology, then pushing back against it does make sense.

I don't know if I'd go that, to that direction. I think it's more along the lines of. As I pointed out in the video, cadmium telluride itself is not as toxic as cadmium is by itself. So it's like, it's kind of overblown to look at it as the individual components, because the solar panel itself is not going to be more toxic than a silicon solar panel.

It's perfectly safe. It's just a matter of what do we do at the end of life. On that, I agree with the comment completely. It's like we do need to have mandatory recycling of these things at the end of life. And on that note, the European Union does have laws on the books for stuff like this, where manufacturers have to take responsibility for the stuff they're putting in the world.

So they're kind of going down that direction. The U. S. is not, but on the same kind of vein, the U. S. has. a burgeoning market around solar panel recycling specifically like there's a company called Solar Cycle in texas i visited them i've got a video about them they're doing some really cool stuff and they're not the only company doing this there's a bunch because there is money to be made Around recycling solar panels for whoever can figure out to do it the cheapest and Solar Cycle's well on their way to trying to do that.

So it's the problem around that is absolutely solvable. It's just a matter of making sure that we are solving it. And with laws like you were seeing in the EU and with companies that we're seeing pop up in this market, I'm less concerned about that because it's, It's not a, like a plastic situation where the plastic industry was lying to us about, oh yeah, we can recycle plastic.

And then we find out 50 years later, oh no, they haven't been recycling most of the plastic we've ever had. This is a very different situation. So I would not apply plastics to this, but we need to keep Their feet to the fire. So I do agree with the idea of, you know, we really need to keep these companies feet to the fire.

So listeners, what do you think? Are there any points of this topic that we missed? Please jump into the comments and let us know. Don't forget leaving a comment, subscribing, liking, and sharing with your friends. Those are three very easy ways to support the podcast. And we appreciate you doing that. if you'd like to support us directly, you can click the join button on YouTube, or you can go to stilltbd.Fm and click the become a supporter button there. Both of those ways, allow you throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts. And then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of talking about. I didn't even mention the C. U. R. E. program. How long, how many teams of marketing people do you think these companies have working on acronyms that sound cute?

Like, Oh, C. U. R. E. Perfect. Teams. I just have to think of the words that match that. Anyway, thank you everybody for taking the time to watch or listen, and we'll talk to you next time.