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Matt and Sean talk about perovskite solar panels, silver prices, and other new (old) issues.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, How This Perovskite Breakthrough Could Change Solar Forever https://youtu.be/8Eh9m4U7GGk?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
Matt and Sean talk about perovskite solar panels, silver prices, and other new (old) issues.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, How This Perovskite Breakthrough Could Change Solar Forever https://youtu.be/8Eh9m4U7GGk?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: Today on Still to Be Determined. We're talking about solar panels, perovskite yet again, and even some precious metals. That's right. We're helping with investment advice. No, we're not.
Matt Ferrell: No, we're not.
Sean Ferrell: Hi, everybody. Welcome to Still to be Determined. This is the follow up podcast to Undecided with Matt Ferrell. I'm not Matt Ferrell. I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm his brother. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi, I write some horror, write some stuff for kids, and I'm just generally curious about technology. And luckily for me, my brother is that Matt from Undecided, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. And Matt, how are you today?
Matt Ferrell: I'm doing great. Feel a little rusty because last week was Thanksgiving, so you and I didn't do anything and I feel like I've forgotten how to do everything again.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, I feel over the Thanksgiving break, I feel like somebody snuck in and sucked my brain out of my head. And then I went back to work this week and I was like.
Sean Ferrell: Me have job.
Matt Ferrell: How me do job? What is this computer?
Sean Ferrell: We hope everybody who is celebrating here in the US or abroad, the Thanksgiving holiday, we hope you had a safe and a relaxing one. And for everybody else, we hope you're entering December, the end of the year, safely and happily and looking forward to, let's just say, a better 2026. Right? So as we barrel toward the end of the year, we're going to talk in a few minutes about Matt's most recent, which is about a solar panel change that involves perovskite. But before we get into that, we always like to take a look at what you've had to say about our previous episode. This is from episode 287. I think this is a good starter comment. It's also kind of in a certain way, it's the best worst comment because it starts off this way from Lyle Dahl, who says, I am not Sean Ferrell. I am AI. No, I am not AI. I'm his older brother, Sean. Which is how I opened last week's or the previous. Not last week's, but the previous episode. In our discussion about AI, and Lyle points out that sounds like something AI might say. Yes, yes, Lyle, we are all trapped in AI's reality. He also says if there's something cool going on internationally that we are not doing here in the US we bring this up almost up on a per episode basis at this point. What's going on in the world? What's going on here in the US? and they are rarely the same story lately. And internationally, a lot of things are done that aren't done here that seem like they would make a lot of sense. But Lyle points out the reason we do them here in the US is usually because doing so would not maximize shareholder value. Yeah. Yes, Lyle, yes. Shareholder value drives a lot of things. Do you want to jump off into that as a general response to that? Which is yes and maybe.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, for me it's like, yes. And I would actually make the argument that it's because we prioritize profits in the short term and not profits in the long term.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: And by making the choices we're making might work for Q2 of 2025 kind of a thing. But then you're screwing yourself over in 2027. So it's like make better long term decisions. And it can work wonders for you financially and for the world if you just think long term. But we're not thinking long term.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. I don't disagree, Lyle, with, with your comment. Shareholder value is the metric that is used. But to jump off what Matt's just said, I wish there was more education done around long term versus short term because shareholder value should incorporate a long term lens as well. And that's the piece that feels like it's missing. It's completely missing. Shareholders are put ahead of other groups of people, including society at large. But shareholders are also not being properly educated around what does it mean to in effect cut off your nose to spite your face. I've had conversations recently with my son who is, for better or worse, trying to take advantage of. He had some summer jobs, he had some money in a savings account and he's like, I want to buy stock. And then he was going into paraxomes of panic because he would buy a stock and it would go down and he'd be oh no. And then he would go up and He'd be like, oh thank God. And then it would go down, oh no. And I was like, like, I'm not investing, buddy. I'm like, I did not advise you to get into stocks at the young age that you are, but if you are going to do that, you should be buying them and then pretending you don't have them until you are my age. So. So if he was to do that, the roller coaster effect would go away. Because yes, shareholder value in the long term is a lot easier.
You ride out those bumps and it's a lot easier to manage. And if you have that long term view, it can also lead to better societal decisions. There were also some conversations in the comments around the duck curve. Matt, do you want to remind us the duck curve. What are we talking about when we talk about a duck curve?
Matt Ferrell: There's two graphs that you kind of overlay on each other. One is how much energy we're using, like how much the grid has to produce. And it kind of does a peaks in the morning, kind of goes down and then kind of comes back up again in the evening. And solar production, which is the inverse of that, it's nothing overnight and then spikes crazy high in the middle of the night. So then when you kind of like draw the line where the two kind of like meet, you end up with this crazy looking thing that looks like a duck. So it's like, it's the duck curve.
Sean Ferrell: Right. So we had some people jumping in to talk about the duck. Like Darryl, who wrote, if the utilities want to flatten out the duck curve, they should install batteries in substations to absorb residential solar during the day. This reduces the need to build more transmission lines and decentralizes the grid and, and makes it more resilient. And then right next to that pixel pusher was in the comments saying duck curve is solved by storage. This will be another limit by the grid operators that is overcome by reality, but still limiting end users. So the word on the street, Matt, more storage, Storage, storage. This is like if they were making the Graduate today, it would be. Instead of saying plastics into Dustin Hoffman's ear, it would be sun storage.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, that seriously is it. That's literally. It's energy storage. Sun energy storage. And the other thing is it doesn't need to be substations and massive grid scale installations. If there were batteries put into everybody's home, every multifamily dwelling, like just little batteries, just all of that collectively can operate like one massive battery and can have the same exact impact. So it's. This is not an instrumental problem. It's very easily solvable. The question just comes with the costs and the cost of batteries and energy storage is falling like a rock. So it's looking better and better every single year. So this is definitely the answer.
Sean Ferrell: Karagoth was in the comments pointing out in response to our conversation, I believe, in which we talked about the movement globally of various tech industries. We talked about. I believe it was in the last episode where I talked about watching a film and when the credits rolled, I was surprised to see a lot of Irish names in the special effects groups. And that was the first time. This is a number of years ago now, but it was the first time that I was aware of the fact that, oh, there's a growing tech sector in Ireland. And Karagoth jumps in to say, I don't know if it's changed, but a large part of Apple was in Ireland because of tax reasons. And you would guess it's the same for many others. I. This is, I mean, whenever there's any kind of political discussion here in the US it's always cut taxes on the rich. Well, corporate taxes being what they are, and the rates that corporations are taxed, this is a global. This is a global conversation. Every country, every state in the United States, every country around the world, everybody's in a race to, how do we entice corporations to come here and how do we keep them here? And it usually revolves around, we promise not to take your money. So, yeah, Karagoth, this is Apple being in Ireland and in other parts of the world, the growing interest in parts of the Middle east to become tech giants. Saudi diversification. It's. It's something we're seeing everywhere. Have you noted, Matt, in your research, any countries entering the mix where you've said, oh, that's unexpected and something to keep an eye on?
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, Ireland is one of those. And what's funny about the Ireland thing is I can't remember when this kind of happened. My memory's a little fuzzy. But Apple did go over there for tax reasons, and then the EU was kind of like, you can't do that because it's undercutting the entire European Union by Ireland doing that. So they were just saying, no, can't do that anymore, got to stop doing that. And so it's like there was a fight between, I think, the EU and Ireland about how they were handling this Brexit. All this other, all this crazy stuff happens. So it's like you see this more and more, like in the United States. I think the movie industry is a great example of like, oh, why are they making all these movies in Georgia? Well, because Georgia is charging no taxes on making films there anymore. So it's like you see this all over the place. But I wouldn't say that there's anything that's kind of like jumps out at me right now other than saying there are some places in the Middle east that have a lot of renewable, sustainable tech investment happening and influx. And it's mainly because those governments are just, there's no taxes. They're. They're injecting huge amounts of like, the, the state wealth funds are helping to kind of like do stuff. So it's like there's a. It's where the money flows.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: That this kind of stuff tends to happen. Which kind of ties into our first part of this whole conversation which was the profits, profits, profits, profits, profits, profits. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Finally our conversation last week. I keep saying last week. It was more than a week ago. Our conversation last time was talking a bit about electrics. The rates that people pay around the United States being affected by the addition of AI into tech, which drives up demand, which then raises prices on everybody. Even those people who say, I don't want to use AI. So. So we're all kind of paying for it. Darth Sirius jumps in to say, I saw a news report the other day saying that Microsoft has committed to offset their data center power usage completely by building community solar. So while nobody wants their stupid copilot running, at least it's potentially going to be powered on sun Juice roll on the floor. So.
Yeah, tech industry, we need more of this. We need the tech industry when they are saying, here's a thing nobody asked for and we're going to give it to you and oh, it's going to cost you more money even if you don't want it and don't use it because we're pulling off of the grid from everybody and now everybody's going to pay more. Yeah. Do this offset, balance the books. Don't. Just like, there's no free ride here and the tech industry needs to own that. I think. What do you think about that?
Matt Ferrell: I agree. It's also funny to me. Which companies, when you look at big tech, which companies are doing this kind of thing where they're trying to be a good steward as best they can versus the ones that are just like, move fast, break things, don't care. We'll figure it out later.
Shocker. OpenAI is not one of those companies that's doing the right thing. And then you got companies like Microsoft that have been around for decades and they have a wider view of things than just they're not in it just to win the AI race. They have more responsibilities and so they're looking at it holistically in a way that a startup doesn't care at all.
Sean Ferrell: Do you think there's. Yeah, I wonder. We've talked for years now about disruption. I remember years ago you read the book about it, talked about how the angle was to go in, break things, make new. And that went from being the. It feels like culturally that's moved from being the. Here's an operating model that you may not be aware of operating in the background. It's moved from that to being. People are saying it out loud here in the US we had the 2024 elections, the Trump administration was moving in and then Elon Musk was given a hammer and walked around the federal government breaking things. And we're still seeing and feeling the repercussions of all of that. And it was described very much in the media, in popular culture as the tech bro methodology of go in, break things. Don't worry about repercussions, just build better. And I can't help but wonder, you mentioned OpenAI and Microsoft. Is there a kind of generational thinking at play when the company, as you said, that's been around for a while. Is it kind of a older style of thinking which is to look at the overall impact, the footprint versus the tech bro break stuff, build it better, don't worry about repercussions mentality that leads to, yeah, we're going to take your power. And also we're going to steal, I mean we've talked about this before. We're going to steal a bunch of books, we're going to teach our models how to work based on stolen property. And that kind of thinking is not worried about the footprints, it's not worried about where is this coming from. It's simply the bottom line is I want to do it, so I'm going to do it. Is that a generational thing? Do corporations that exist for decades become mature in that way?
Matt Ferrell: I don't think so. I don't think that's what's going on here. I think there's more nuance to it. This could be an entire video. But the whole idea of if you look at the startups, OpenAI, Claude, Anthropic, Perplexity, and then you look at Google, Microsoft and Apple, there's a huge difference here between they're all racing, trying to do the same thing. Apple's, yes, Apple's part of the conversation. But yes, they're just distant place behind everybody else. But Google has shown that they're leading the pack now. Their AI models are better than OpenAI's, better than Claude's. They kind of just sprinted past everybody and Microsoft is kind of, they seem to have hands in OpenAI, but it also seems like they almost don't care too much. They're kind of playing the field in a smart way and Apple is kind of like they don't need it, like to make their own foundational model. They can just like whoever kind of wins, they can just like sign a deal. And right now they, it looks like they signed a deal with Google to make their back end AI for them. Yeah, like, okay, so you got these major companies that have revenue streams diversified all over the place and then you've got OpenAI who's losing billions every month, every quarter. Right now they have no revenue stream perplexity, no real revenue stream. It's like they're basically the one trick ponies that are startups trying to build out infrastructure that does not exist. And then you have companies that already have some infrastructure, deep, deep pockets where they can kind of build all that stuff out in a responsible way while still also trying to race forward as fast as they can. So I don't think it's a generational thing. I think it's an advantage thing. I think these large companies have an advantage that allows them, like Microsoft, to think holistically while still trying to push as fast as they can.
Google's doing the same thing where OpenAI has to be a little more cutthroat and a little more like chatting people and stabbing people in the back and doing whatever they can to move fast and break things.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: I think that's what's at play here.
Sean Ferrell: Not worried about penalties because if they don't throw an elbow into somebody's face, they're not going to win the game at all. Right, right, Interesting. I think you kind of like dropped a nugget at the beginning of that, which was this could be a video of its own. And I think maybe to like, you know, to look at the apples to apples comparison between these various companies and what, where they are and what they're trying to do and how they appear to be doing. It would be an interesting thing for us to take a look at. Finally, from last episode, Kiriak says, Matt, you have an influential podcast. Maybe not Marques Brownlee influential, lol.
But there are people in the energy, but there are people in the energy and tech sectors paying attention to you. So I wish when you talk about data centers that in addition to solar, et cetera, you keep small modular reactors in the mix. SMRs are a no brainer for this and similar applications. New scale power is certified by the NRC. All already to build smarts. Takes three years to put one in versus ten for conventional reactors. Seems they've got to be part of the solution. You talk a little bit about small modular reactors. We've talked about them before and very often our conversations about them are people in the comments showing up and say why would you talk about small modular reactors, which is hard to say.
Matt Ferrell: SMR, Sean, SMR.
Sean Ferrell: Which reminds me of an old joke that I learned when I was 10 years old, but we won't get into that. But you want to talk about them briefly here, has the needle moved a little bit more on these popping up globally or here in the US context?
Matt Ferrell: Well, I've done several videos on small modular reactors of different kinds, thorium, other kinds. So it's like I am well attuned to what they're doing, what's happening in the space, and they are going to become a player at some point. But the problem is the reason I didn't bring them up in this video is because they are a non, a non player right now. They're signing agreements and deals right now, but nobody's built them yet. They're not actually being used yet. We're still several years away from them becoming a thing where you'll like three years from now or two years from now, you'll see a news report finally that says first ones come online at, you know, so and so facility, but we're still years from it. So it's like that's part of the reason why I didn't bring it up. Where there's technology that exists today that is being used today at various data centers all over the world, and that's generators, battery storage, solar and wind, those are all being used at various data centers. But nuclear doesn't exist right now. But it's going to be a player because that's the whole point of these are like just a gigantic battery you can just plunk down. And here's a 20 megawatt generator essentially that just will run for five years without refueling, plunked right down behind your building. And then in five years they come and tune it up or change it out and you get another 20 megawatts fresh at that point. So it's like you can see why it's going to be a thing. But the problem is right now nobody's actually installing them. There's still a lot of red tape. There's a lot of regulations of approvals that they still have to go through. So that's what's holding and slowing them down right now is mainly that. So how prevalent they become still remains to be seen. But I do think that they will become a player at some point.
Sean Ferrell: Right. And if it's not, I mean, the commenter says takes three years to put one in versus ten for conventional reactors. Thank you for comparing reactors to reactors that's A good measurement. But three years versus solar panel farm that could be up and running in a year is less. Yeah. So six months you could have a.
Matt Ferrell: Solar panel array up. It's like. And it could take three years and yet we're still years from that happening. So it's kind of like. That's kind of where I'm coming back to of SMRs are a future option that is going to start to catch on more, but they're just not here quite yet.
Sean Ferrell: On now to our conversation about Matt's most recent. This is how this perovskite breakthrough could change solar. And Matt, big picture. We're looking at perovskite again. This is not a new, brand new topic, but do you want to give a thumbnail version of the video?
Sean Ferrell: What's the switch that's been thrown right.
Matt Ferrell: Now for what we talked about in the video? It's really about how you can use graphene to improve the lifespan of perovskites, because perovskites have a lifespan problem. So graphene can help on that regard. It can also help on the cost angle because you need fewer metals like silvers and gold and stuff like that too, as your conductors, because graphene can act as a conductor. So you end up with this much cheaper, longer lasting solar panel. That's essentially in a nutshell, what we're talking about here.
Sean Ferrell: Right. So with silver and gold not being needed as often, do you think there's a chance that the Rankin Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer special will be altered so that Yukon Cornelius is looking for graphene?
Sean Ferrell: On now to your comments from Matt's most recent.
Matt Ferrell: I wonder how many people out there will get that joke.
Sean Ferrell: Jump into the comments. Komodo Damon says to you, thank you for the reality section of the video. I'm sure you just want to talk about the cool, interesting stuff. But splashing cold water on things to people can be more realistic about these breakthroughs. Is very good to have in a video like this. Do you want to talk a bit about your approach to these conversations? You and I talk about it offline quite a bit. The balancing act that you play of news is news, whether it's interesting or cool or in your hand or simply an updating of information. There are lots of different things that cross your desk that you talk about and you very often wrestle with the reality that in the comments people come out and say, wake me up when it gets here. And you're like, hey, just because it's not in your hand yet doesn't mean it's not an interesting thing to talk about. So it feels like this comment is a little tiny flag in a process that seems like, have you landed on a place where you're like, I'm going to start legitimately saying, hey, I get it. There's this information and then there's you waiting at the store. And I'm going to talk about the reality now of, will you be able to hold this in your hand? So is this your way of building a methodology into your videos so that you.
Sean Ferrell: Not that you were arguing with commenters, but that you embrace the spirit of those comments and saying, I get what you're looking for. Let me address that.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: We just talked about SMRs. It's like, I have videos geeking out about SMRs. They're not here yet. They're still years away, but they are going to be a thing. The topics I pick are topics that are, it's like skating to where the hockey puck is going. That overused phrase. It's like, you're not looking at what things are today. You're looking at where is this stuff heading. And you can start to see that based on where the research is happening, where the developments are happening, you can start to kind of see, oh, I think solar panels are starting to head this direction. Let's explore that. But then you get called out for doing that because it's not a reality today and it's still five to ten years away, but you still need to talk about it because you haven't understand where this stuff is heading. So this was kind of a. Like, we're trying, we try to do this all the time, but I'm. We're being a little more explicit about it now. Like, we're trying to make sure it's like, hey, let's get the wet blanket out. Like, yeah, we just geeked out for 10 minutes about how amazing this thing is. But, but there is a valid criticism of this right now. Like for this one, graphene, still not the mass production it needs to be at. It's difficult to make. It's more costly than it should be, but even at that cost, it's still cheaper than getting silver for your solar panel. So it's like, there are benefits that could be made today, even at the higher cost, but can they manufacture it at a scale they need to, maybe not. So trying to make sure that we're, we're giving it the caveats that it needs to, to give people the context to understand this is cool stuff. But just simmer down. Don't get too riled up in the comments because it's like this is something that we need to make sure is like tempered, I guess would be the best way to put it. Temper that enthusiasm, be enthusiastic. Just temper it a little bit.
Sean Ferrell: So with that being said, do you think there's a chance that you'll change the name of the channel to Wet Blanket with Matt Ferrell? Robert Lynn. Yes. Robert Lynn jumped into the comments in response to the idea of hey, this could make solar panels cheaper. And Robert shows up to say it's not all about the solar panels. I was surprised, he writes how little the actual solar panel cost relative to the entire install. The aluminum framing and microinverters cost much more than I expected. And the install if you don't do it yourself is also a significant cost. Having the solar panel cost isn't really a game changer when you consider all the costs. So yes, there is the value of the panel itself. And if a panel is going down from 100 to 50, that's great. Do you want to talk a little bit about in your experience, what was the overall non panel portion of the putting in solar panels? What was the cost?
Matt Ferrell: This is, this is not. Don't take this as literal values, but I'm going to talk in percentages. Like if you're in the U.S. specifically the people in Australia, please don't comment on what I'm about to say because I know you have super cheap solar. I'm jealous. But here in the US you could probably say half of the cost of a professional solar installer to install it is labor. Half, easily half. So if you are somebody that likes to do it yourself, you can save a significant chunk of installing the solar panels in your home. So that is where the bulk of it is. Then it's probably like maybe a third goes to the solar panels and then what's left is like the racking systems and stuff like that. So it's like when I say solar panels, I'm including inverters because you have to have the inverters for the solar panels. But it's like inverters and solar panels. Maybe it's a third and then the rest is the racking stuff and then a huge amount to the labor and permitting and all that other stuff that happens. So yes, making a solar panel cheaper is not going to take a $30,000 system and make it $15,000. It might go from 30 to 25, which is still a chunk. It's like I want to take every savings I can get. So it's like there are advancements being made around inverters, and there's great competition out there for inverters that depending on what you want to do, you can really shop around and get some good savings on inverters. So it's the cost of getting a professional to do it where you say, give me solar. And they come to you and they go, put it up. And they think of everything for you. You're paying for that. So it's like it's a balance. You got to figure out what's right for you. And then there's a whole thing about Australia. It's like, I gotta bring up Australia again. Because it's like they figured it out.
And I think everybody needs to look at Australia and just mimic what they're doing because they have a thing where on my phone in Australia, you could go in, put your information in your address and say, I want to get solar on my home, and hit submit. And then 24 hours later, you get an email saying, you're approved. And then you go to your installer and say, I want it. I'm approved. And a week later it's installed in your house and turned on here in the US Months, it could be six months before, from start to finish, before I get installed. So it's like, that's part of the reason it's so expensive here. And so if we mimicked how they have stuff set up from regulatory reasons, from approvals and inspections and all that kind of stuff like Australia does, the costs would come down and the labor costs would come down. All that kind of stuff would improve as well as the reducing the solar panel cost. Sorry, getting off the soapbox now.
Matt Ferrell: There's so many. There's so many things that cause the cost to go high. And the US Is crazy expensive. Other places, the world is much cheaper.
Sean Ferrell: It's always. The conversation is very complex, even when you stay within, for us, the US Context, because state to state is also.
Matt Ferrell: Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Wildly different. And everything you said about, like, who you get to come put in the installation, it's like getting a contractor. It's like getting a plumber, an electrician, a roofer. Some guy's going to show up and say, like, I got a hammer. I can do that for 100 bucks. Well, that might not be the guy you want installing the thing. You might want the licensed person who has a record of demonstrating they can do it and they charge a bit more. So I Love this username Scientist538 jumped into the comments in response to the changes in metals used in solar panels. As Matt pointed out in his video, if we can change what we're using, we can move away from some of these precious metals that are so in demand. And scientist points out silver is already 50 an ounce. To which Nicker responded, if it's $100 an ounce at the end of year, we in trouble. And then.
Sean Ferrell: Alan C. Jumped in to say, yes, expect a desperate race to replace industrial silver in all current applications over the next 12 to 24 months. Yeah, you want to talk about silver?
Matt Ferrell: Silver's expensive, yo.
Matt Ferrell: As Scientist538 pointed out, the price is going up and up. It's because silver is used in so many different pieces of electronics, not just renewable electronics is used in so much stuff.
Sean Ferrell: I will interrupt you here. I lifted these comments which were right next to each other. They're part of the same chain. But as time went on, more people were jumping into the comments, updating the price and the price was going, the price was going up. So your comment section had an almost stock market ticker of you'd scroll and be like, it's now $58, it's now 61. And it was going up and down. And yeah, like this is not, this is not sustainable. This is not where this is not the material we should be landing on to say, hey, you know those earrings that have been handed down for generations in your family, you might want to sell them. Because we're trying to make some solar panels and. Yeah, we don't have the right materials. It's really, really not great that it's dependent upon something that is traded at the prices that it is.
Matt Ferrell: This is where the necessity is the mother of invention and money makes the world go around. All those things kind of coming together because it's the same thing with magnets. It's like rare earth magnets are becoming harder to get, more expensive. And so there's this race to find non rare earth magnets that will perform as well in electric motors for EVs and things like that. And there are companies out there doing that that have these well performing magnets that aren't rare earth. Same thing for silver. It's like people are racing to find alternatives to silver for solar panels and other tech because the costs are just getting so high. It's going to cause these products to get more and more expensive and nobody wants that because profits shareholder value. So they're going to try to find other things that can still get you a good value like a performance at a better cost. So in the end, it's going to work out better for us finding alternatives like this. And there are some. I've done videos on other solar panels that don't use silver in them either. But graphene is one of the ones that's an alternative that we could start leaning into.
Sean Ferrell: Finally, Mubi jumped into the comments. This is something we've touched on briefly in this conversation already, but Mubi says, I feel like I watched this exact video at least half a decade ago. Yeah. Matt, do you want to talk briefly about, like, we have talked about perovskites, we've talked about graphene, we've talked about solar panels.
Matt Ferrell: Yep.
Sean Ferrell: How big a tick would you say this conversation has moved from the first time we talked about it to now? People jump into the comments and say, watch this exact same video. And I'm not saying Mubi's wrong.
Matt Ferrell: No, he's not.
Sean Ferrell: But there's nuance here. So are you like, yeah, things haven't moved in this area as much as people might have thought, or things have moved further. But it's hard to recognize because the lived experience isn't yet there. But.
Sean Ferrell: Where do you see this conversation landing today versus the one five years ago?
Matt Ferrell: Well, specifically for perovskite and graphene as two separate things. In both cases, I would say they have moved kind of substantially, but it's not recognized because it still isn't in our daily lives. But there's been significant progress, especially for perovskites, because perovskites have been hyped as the next big solar thing for ever, and nothing seemed to have been happening. But this past year, it was like, 2024, 2025. They're actually being sold and installed in utility scale arrays for testing from different PV manufacturers. So perovskites are now starting to roll out. So that's part of why I'm like, okay, the hype is now starting to hit reality. And I actually just finished a script for a video that's coming up about graphene, because I'm revisiting this because the first time I talked about graphene was like, five years ago and talked about all the hype for it. Because it was going to make space elevators, Sean. We were going to get space elevators. Where's my space elevator? So I have a video coming up.
Sean Ferrell: Still waiting on mine.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, I have a video coming up in a few weeks where we revisit graphene of like, well, where is it now? This super overhyped 20 years ago. This thing is going to change reality and it's going to make Everything amazing. And we're going to be living Star Trek. And 20 years later, it's like, well, where's my graphene? I'm going to be making a video that deals about that. Like, where is it? And that fun fact is it's in a lot of products already. You just don't know it. And it's products that aren't products that consumers are buying because it's like utility scale stuff or commercial stuff. It's not in our lives quite yet, but it's trickling out, it's coming out, it's here. And it's having really interesting impacts.
Sean Ferrell: Right. The last time we talked about it, I remember we talked about the marketing of it, that it was being slapped on packages of like, here's a DVD player with graphene and headphones with graphene. It was just like, what am I doing? Like.
Sean Ferrell: I'm putting these on my head. Is this, Am I impervious to bullets now? What am I thinking? Stronger? Like, is this.
Sean Ferrell: Is this album now better because of the graphene? And is there graphene? Yeah. So all the marketing, all the hype. But let's get down to the brass tacks. Finally, the best, worst comment. Yes, Simon Brisbane, I think we've featured you before, but if not, this is a good one. Wagga Wagga, the place so nice they named it twice. Thank you, Simon.
Sean Ferrell: So, listeners, viewers, what did you think about all of this? Let us know in the comments. Don't forget, when you jump into the comments, you are going to be a part of the conversation in our upcoming episode and you help shape the mothership Undecided as well. But you also provide support to us by commenting, liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support us and we appreciate that support. If you'd like to support us more directly, you can click the join button here on YouTube or you can go to StillTBD.FM, click the join button there. Both ways allow you to throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts and then we get down to the heavy, heavy business and figuring out what the graphene is doing in our heads. Thank you so much, everybody for taking the time to watch or listen and we'll talk to you next time.