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Matt and Sean talk about increasing solar power efficiency by making the panels (ew) sweat, and more topics from last week’s episode.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, How This Hydrogel Gives Us 12% More Solar Efficiency https://youtu.be/yWMxM8YQcN4?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ
Matt and Sean talk about increasing solar power efficiency by making the panels (ew) sweat, and more topics from last week’s episode.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, How This Hydrogel Gives Us 12% More Solar Efficiency https://youtu.be/yWMxM8YQcN4?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 sweating, which I could talk about for quite a long time. I am currently in a very humid basement and there's no air moving. Yes, this is Still To Be Determined, the follow up podcast to Undecided with Matt Ferrell. I am not Matt Ferrell. I am Sweaty Ferrell. I am Sean Ferrell. 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 of Undecided and he's here with us as usual. Matt, how are you today?
Matt Ferrell: Not sweaty Sean.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, you're in a lovely climate controlled environment where as we enter the end times, you're just going to be sitting there just being like what's on tv. I'm going to be sitting here just like a mask of sweat, like heat wave, shmeat wave. Yeah. Anyway, we'll be talking about Matt's most recent in a minute and it is about a gel that has been developed to thank goodness somebody finally did it help our solar panels to sweat.
Matt Ferrell: That's right.
Sean Ferrell: It's been too long. It has been too long. But before we get into that, we always like to take a look at what you've had to say about our previous conversations. Last week, episode 282, we had a brief chat about when to upgrade and there were some people jumping in the comments to point out how they feel about being forced to upgrade. Like iamb9 who wrote good morning Sean and Matt, just pausing at 2 minutes 8 seconds while talking about upgrading. You might mention this, but a word should be said about forced obsolescence. I'm handy with a phone repair. I've replaced batteries, screens, cameras, speakers, haptic motors. It's not everybody who can say they've replaced a haptic motor, so I'm impressed. The one thing I can't replace is Apple no longer supporting a model or iOS. I have older devices that suit my needs, but fine, just fine. But updates and software force me into upgrading when I don't want or need to. Yes, this is something we've talked about on the channel quite a bit before, and it did not really jump into our conversation last week in which it was a more light touch of oh, when should I upgrade? That was, for me, kind of a conversational Is there anything about the new models that seems enticing enough for me to want to upgrade or for other people to want to upgrade? But built in obsolescence is a problem not just with phones, but across the board, the fact that companies used to make things with metal parts and then moved to nylon and other forms of plastic, well, those gears, those motors are going to wear out and then eventually you're going to have a repair person show up like I did once with a repair to an expensive dishwasher. And he looked at me and he said, you need a dishwasher, buy the cheapest model they have, because when it's time to replace it or repair it, it's cheaper in the long run.
And this guy's job was to show up at people's homes and fix them. So he was basically saying, yeah, this is me kind of like cutting off my nose to spite my face, but it's not worth it in the long run. It is a problem. Matt, do you have any thoughts about that?
Matt Ferrell: When it comes to Apple, it's like the one thing I wish they would do, I totally get from a company's perspective, like Apple, where they will only support hardware for like five, six, seven years, and then after that they stopped doing software updates because, you know, doing software updates for a device that might be 10 years old, it's like that's going to be so cost prohibitive for a company to keep doing right. And the logistics around it, it just doesn't make sense that hardware won't be able to keep up and all this kind of stuff. So it's, It's a logistical nightmare. So I understand why they would kind of cut it off, but it's. I wish they would do something where it's like, when a device hits that point, like, could they do a version where they fork a version of the software and kind of open source it and say to the community, do what you want?
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, yeah. And I think that that has happened before. I think there have been some companies that have basically offloaded into public domain. I imagine with some products like phones, iOS and stuff like that, you couldn't do that super easily without running into problems with security and.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, security, potentially, you'd basically.
Sean Ferrell: You couldn't say, oh, here's the old version of iOS. People would take that and they would. They would figure out ways to do terrible things to be able to hack into people's devices. But there has to be a version of that, especially the physicality of the product. Yeah, you end up with. At a certain point, they should just say, this is how we built these things, we're not building them anymore, and hand that off to third parties. And I'm thinking about car repair. That happens all the time with car repair where it's oh, you need a new doohickey and you can buy the doohickey that's built by Honda. And Honda will say like, this is the doohickey you should use. But there's also 10,000 people in the background are like, we also make the same doohickey a lot cheaper, does the same thing. There was also some chatter about bifacial panels, which was the heart of our conversation last week. Junkers jumped in to say, I installed bifacial panels flush with the roof. This was a part of the conversation we had about bifacial panels. Of course bifacial panels are showing up and the manufacturer is saying, look, it draws power from both sides. And then some people are like, that's great, I'm going to put it right flush with my roof so it doesn't do that. Why would they do that? Junkers points out they were in fact cheaper, but there were two other reasons. First, I wanted half cut panels with good low light collection, AKA cloudy weather. And second, the dimensions were the best fit for my roof. So it's a bit of a matrix, but yeah, they are flush mounted to the roof. It isn't always about direct sun. In fact, power generation during summer is almost never the problem. That's the easy part. It's power generation during winter that is always the problem. Don't get me wrong, having extra generation in summer is nice. It lets you run AC more or less whenever you want.
But when you size a system to do decently in the colder seasons and across winter, summer generation winds up being over the top anyway. And that's an interesting aspect to this. Depending where you are globally and you're looking at solar collection, it hadn't occurred to me that you want to pick your lowest energy production time as your goal because otherwise you're in the middle of winter and suddenly drawing a lot of power from the grid. And that's going to be counterproductive for you.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, it's always the lowest common denominator that you have to plan for. When solar, you're talking about solar. So for me it's like the reason I'm not off grid is because I would have had to get so much solar production the middle of December and January. It would have been like probably not 2x my production, maybe like 1 1/2x what I'm currently doing.
Sean Ferrell: And that's quite a bit though it's like a full 50% over what you currently are doing.
Matt Ferrell: It is, but it's also like I didn't have the roof space for it. I could put a solar ray in the backyard and get it.
Sean Ferrell: Did you think about building a bigger house in order to make that roof space?
Matt Ferrell: Just building extra roof?
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. Why does that look like a mushroom? Who is this man? But it looks like a carrier ship.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah. But if you can plan for that lowest common denominator, it almost doesn't matter how much you're producing in the middle of summer because it's like, you know it's going to be more than you need. Yeah. So it's, it's finding the panels. I like what Junker brought up. It's like you're trying to find a panel that can perform the best for you in your situation in the middle of, in the middle of winter, whatever the lowest common denominator is that, that season. And if you can nail that, you're going to be great in the middle of summer. So it's, it's an interesting way to look at it. So I hadn't thought about that. For me, it's like I was looking at regular size panels and bifacial panels were more expensive. Like not like a huge amount more money, but it was more money. So it's like, why would I do that? It didn't make sense financially to do it.
Sean Ferrell: I imagine there are. We don't know where Junkers is located, so it could be location globally. It could be where manufacturers are that maybe the prices are different. But I am curious about who helps you spec out how much you need for your home. Is that a contractor comes and looks at your home or did you figure out your power needs and then the contractor works with you to figure that out? At what point did you say, oh, here's a graph. And if I want to get like, did you have the option to say, well, I could make December and January my weakest months? Or could you have said, well, November through February I could make my weakest months and then cut back on the total number of panels. Was there any kind of sliding scale that you were looking at?
Matt Ferrell: Yeah. Well, it's all about figuring out what your overall goal is and for who figures this out. For most people, it's the contractor, the salesperson from the solar rep company that comes to your house or you go online. They're usually the ones that are like, what they usually ask for is send me six months of your electric bills. They usually ask for your electric bills to see exactly what your use is. And then they plug that data into a system that they all kind of use and then it just spits out a. Here's what their energy use is over the course of the year. Here's what their house could theoretically produce. And they always try to kind of give you the best value. A good installer. They won't try to oversell you. They'll try to say, here's something that will cut your energy use in half in your costs in half. Or here's something that will just take care of all your costs across the year. But what I've. I actually put together a solar guide. It sounds like it's. You pitched me up for a sales.
Sean Ferrell: This was completely unintentional. Yeah. Just to anybody through.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, I sell a solar guide that walks through my rationale of how I think you should look at it. And I don't think you should rely on the solar installer. Use their guidance. But before you reach out to an installer, you need to do your own homework. And it's not that hard. There's tools online that help you do this. And you can kind of do your own assessment, look at your own energy bills, see how much energy you use over the, across the entire year, and then figure out what your goals are. Do you want to meet 100% of your energy needs over the year? Is that your goal, just to try to get your electric bill as close to zero as possible? Are you trying to go off grid? Like. Whatever your goals are then establishes how much energy you need to produce. And then you can plug those numbers into a tool that are. There's tools online that will help you do this. And then you can kind of set your own benchmark so that when the solar installer comes, you can say, here's what I want, and you can talk to them for exactly what you want. And then you're driving that conversation, not them. That's usually my recommendation.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. It's always an interesting experience talking to somebody who's trying to sell you something. And of course, sales is a difficult profession. There's a lot of work that goes into it, but there's a certain amount of. I won't say smoke and mirrors, but there are certain gameplays that they want to lean on because they want to maximize the profitability on their side. So it's not that they are all nefarious people, but there are those elements of just like, okay, I'm kind of seeing behind the curtain in this moment. And I had that experience once where I was buying something, I was buying a large purchase and went in and said, I'm paying cash. And they did not want me to pay cash. They were like, let's figure out a lease for you. And I'm like, I'm paying cash. I'm just outright buying this. Well, let's take a look at the numbers and see what we can do for it. And I finally reached the point where I was just like, look, if you don't want to sell me this for cash, I'll go buy it from somebody else. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what we're saying. That's not what we're saying. They wanted me to lease the purchase. It serves them in the long run. So it's one of those moments just like, oh, you see all those ads, like, why buy, lease? They're not doing you a favor.
Matt Ferrell: No, no. They're making big money in the long run.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. So your suggestion of doing your homework first is a valuable one. And again, this was not an intentional sales pitch for Matt's guide. But, yeah, there are guides out there. Matt has one. Other people also have them.
Matt Ferrell: Yep.
Sean Ferrell: There was also one of the conversations that we had last week about clickbait and the Mighty Abs jumped in to point out a bit of irony. This video is clickbait 2. It spends, like, five minutes talking about bifacial panels and 90% of the video time talking about other random stuff. Kind of ironic when a big chunk of the video was a discussion about clickbait and where to draw the line. The Mighty Abs. The irony of this moment is not lost upon me. I appreciate it. And that does raise for me. It is my responsibility in naming these videos and writing the descriptions. And after reading your comment, I did have a gut check moment of who does the Mighty Abs think he is? And then I was like, well, maybe they're right. So, yeah, I'm going to revise the framing of the description, and I'm going to revise just basically to say, like, we're talking about more topics. So, like, this week's explains this video.
Matt Ferrell: You put.
Sean Ferrell: And more and more topics from last week's episode. You're not wrong. You're not wrong. If somebody clicked on our conversation because it said it was about bifacial panels, and they were like, this is 90%. Not that. That's on me. So thank you, Mighty Abs, for pointing that and for pointing it out so neutrally. It was such a neutral comment.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: So I appreciated that.
Matt Ferrell: Show me one podcast that is not that it is.
Sean Ferrell: I mean, and here's the thing. For anybody again, peeking behind the curtain, I'm writing the descriptions and putting some stuff in place before we have the conversation. So some of this is not like. I don't know how long the conversation about the bifacial panels will take. I know we're going to talk about it, but we're going to talk about a few other things first. Last week we just happened to spiral a little bit outside that orbit. And we talked about other stuff more. But it is worth me remaining in a position of saying, like, yeah, we're going to talk about more than just that. And I think that it was a valuable reminder. And it is something. I think we've now been doing this. Like I just said, this is episode 283 or 282. This is 283. So we've been doing this for now. What is that? Most of our lives, I think we used to do that. And at some point I just abbreviated the write ups. So it became more and more condensed. And just like just about Matt's latest. And it's not always about Matt's latest. Sometimes we talk about other stuff. We hope you enjoy it.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: So, yes. And finally, one last comment. This is our best, worst comment. The horror from Roemer who says in response to our conversations about aging and aging into your parents. Yes, as I age, I am noticing the habits I disliked most about my parents. Take residence in me. Good screenplay for a horror movie. Yes. Yes. And as somebody who has aspirations to write more horror. That's not a bad one right there. Wait a minute. Am I just becoming my mother? On now to our conversation about this week's Undecided, which is Matt's. How this hydrogel gives us 12% more solar efficiency. It is. I mean, it's just gross. But it is fascinating that they. The development of a gel that. And it makes. It's not that difficult to understand. Which is like. It's kind of crazy, right? Straightforward. Yeah. This, I mean, we all see. We get shipments. We go to somewhere. We buy a package of something. We get a product from ikea. We get a bottle of vitamins. You open up and there's a silica packet. And you know what it's there for. It's like. Yeah, this is keeping moisture. It's drawing in the moisture. Okay. So somebody makes a gel that does that. And then when it's heated up, it releases that. It's just doing what skin does. It's. And it's. The simplicity of that is really kind of remarkable.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: And it's really. It's very. It's. To me, it's fascinating. And the idea that you could say when you reach the point where you said there are manufacturers who are making these so they can slap them onto the back of existing panels, there was a brief moment of like, really? And then I was like, well, of course, why not? It is just, yeah, a heat conduction issue. It is just like, yeah, the back of the panel is going to be hot. Slap this on it. When it gets hot, it's going to sweat and when it cools off, it's going to suck up that moisture. That's disgusting. But again, it's remarkable. It's a little bit like. It's a little bit like. And this is one of those cases where I'm like, okay, what. Where have I seen this before? Have you ever seen the movie the Blob? Is this just. The Blob? Is all the blob was somebody made a hydrogel that sucks in moisture. And it was like, did. All they need to do with the Blob is heat it up. And all the people would have been.
Matt Ferrell: Ejected episodes I've ever made. I did not expect this one to be the one that would break you.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, this is like, okay, so like, take me, take me backward a little bit into. Is this something that the. What is this born of? Is this born of the manufacturers of the panels saying, heat in the panel is one of our efficiency issues. We need to crack this. And some are saying, well, let's put in tubes of water. And others are saying, do we put in some kind of cooling fan or something like that? And as you point out, the more you do something that requires itself, the use of power, it becomes self defeating. So then it becomes like you with, well, I need a bigger house in order to have enough room for the panels for my current house. The ridiculousness of that is obvious. We can't use the electricity we're generating to run cooling fans or a pump system to move water through this. So what do we do that's passive? And we've talked on the channel before about research into, oh, they discovered if you raise them up off the ground and you put them over water or you put them over grass, you put them on a farm where there are animals walking underneath and they use them for shade. And like, there's a part of me that thinks that that's the sweetest version. Like, that's the one. That's the one I want to see the most. It's just like the panels 12ft up off the air and a bunch of cows standing underneath Just saying, like, sup? Yeah, that's. That for me, is the one that I want to see the most. But is this just born of that or is this one of those inventions which was accidental? Some other field had this gel and they were like, well, you cool it absorbs, you heat it, it ejects. We don't know what to do with that. Where did this come from?
Matt Ferrell: It's definitely not solar companies going, we got a problem we have to solve. It's not that this is a widely known issue with solar panels, that their efficiency goes down as they get hot, and then that also kind of shortens the lifespan. It's kind of this weird kind of like, of course, going to be baking in the sun. That's how they have to generate energy. But that heat also causes a problem. But the panel still lasts 25, 30 years. So it's kind of like, I don't think this was a urgent issue for the solar panel manufacturers to try to crack. What this was, was, hydrogels are not new. They've been around for a while. This is more about researchers going, how can we put this to use? Like, what are the different ways we can use it? So there's research comp groups that are taking hydrogels to do create, like basically desalinate, not desalinate water, but create water. So if you're in a water scarcity issue, you could have these hydrogels that during the night absorb moisture, and then during the day they excrete it, which you collect, and then you've got drinking water. So it's like very cool. But. But one of the ways that some of these systems work is you have to heat the hydrogel to get it out. So it's like, well, that's an energy. It takes energy to do that. Well, there's a research group that was kind of like, what if we just slap these in the back of a solar panel and make the solar panels better, that the heat from the solar panel will then get the water out. That, you know, it's like, it's just engineers being engineers just seeing problems and figuring out ways where they can utilize them. And that's what this was born of, of just research groups going, we might be able to crack the solar panel problem with the stuff that we discovered over here.
And then on top of which, we might be able to take that water that we're extracting and use it for drinking water at the same time. It's like, win, win. It's like, I'm with you, Sean. It's like, my favorite kind of solar panel use is agrivoltaics. It's like the things you're growing underneath the panels release vapor, which cool the panels. So in agrivoltaics, it's like the solar panels can help shade the plants, which they might need, which helps the plants grow better. And the plants giving off the vapor helps the solar panels be more efficient. So it's like this wonderful symbiotic relationship. And this is the same exact thing. It's just instead of nature doing it, it's chemistry, physics. It's just like scientists being scientists.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, yeah, it's. I mean, that's. And I'm fascinated by. Does it potentially produce enough water to actually be an effective source of hydration? And if not of hydration for humans, then of hydration potentially for agriculture, that kind of thing. If you have these panels, let's say you have them in an agrovoltaic situation and they have this gel on them, does that then become. Well, as they sweat, they are then dropping water onto the plants. So it's a form of hydration for the plants then. And I begin to wonder, like, how much water that is, because if you have, let's say a 1 cubic meter only produces a half a cup of water, now, that's negligible.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: I mean, in the long run, that, of course, is a benefit to the panel, but it's. If it's more than that, then might this not be a solution to that kind of agrovoltaic circle? Like, not only are they providing shade, they're also providing a water source because they're capturing some of that moisture that is coming off of the plants and literally re releasing it. So it becomes then another version of that circle that benefits both.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: There was an interesting comment from Dell Ningit, who points out that there are other forms of panel cooling that are sometimes, well, dare I say, MacGyvering it. Dell says I use an air convection question mark system for mine. Obviously a lot smaller. I have more than enough juice for the house, but I don't think I could run more than four or five times what I have now. And I only did that because winter sucks. Anyway, when I was in Afghanistan, I went to a village and every little mud hut had the necks of glass bottles running through the walls. When I asked, they said it was Afghani ac. Anyway, it really did work. Inside was much cooler than outside, and not just because it was a mud hut. There was a detectable air movement. So years later, when I read that hot panels are a bad thing. And I didn't want to rely on a liquid cooling system. I sawed some 6 inch PVC pipe lengthwise and a whole bunch of 2 liter bottles. I mounted everything in channels along the back of the panels. I put getting a 6% Celsius drop on the front of the panel. No moving parts, no science. Heck, I don't even know how the hell I got this far. Lol.
Matt Ferrell: I love it.
Sean Ferrell: Jerry rig it.
Matt Ferrell: Man, that's awesome.
Sean Ferrell: I mean, I mean that's just, that's next level thinking. I'm like, here's. You talked about just these are engineers being engineers. I don't know what Dell's background is. I don't know if Dell works as an engineer, but that's an engineer's brain right there to say here's what I can do. And that's, that's really impressive. Dropping the 6 degrees Celsius drop. That's not nothing.
Matt Ferrell: That's significant.
Sean Ferrell: That's, that's significant. Dare I say Dell. Patent, patent, patent. And also if you might be onto.
Matt Ferrell: Something, open source it, Open source it.
Sean Ferrell: Share it, share it, share it.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Reason jumped in to the comments to ask a question about how do these wet solar panels handle frost? Does the moisture attract bacteria, moss, et cetera? This was a recurring theme in the comments of people saying, okay, if you've got this stuff that's like collecting all this moisture, is there an unhealthy or degradation aspect to this that we, we haven't yet become aware of? From my perspective, I would imagine that a gel that's absorbing the moisture is not in and of itself going to be corrupted because it's not like an airy environment where you would get bacterial growth. It's inside a gel. But I am curious as well. What's the long term impact as far as like, is there a point where you're like, okay, now you no longer want to touch it?
Matt Ferrell: Well, the authors of the main paper that we looked at, one of the main papers we looked at, they didn't share details about frost, like the winter part of it. They did not share the information in the paper itself, but they talked about the kind of like the fouling of it, the debris, stuff like that, because these hydrogels can be kind of tacky. And so they talked about how at the end of the testing there was definitely some debate, debris and grasses and stuff stuck to the back of the hydrogel, but it had virtually no impact on the hydrogel's ability to absorb the water at all. And they share the exact numbers and I have them written down somewhere. It was went from 0.53 to 0.50. So it was basically like a 1% drop in its ability to absorb water. So it's like insignificant. So there was that side of it. So the fouling of it isn't. Doesn't seem to be a huge concern. I mean, the thing as far as the bacteria, these. Some of these hydrogels use a. Like a lithium chloride. They're basically using a salt inside of the gel, which is kind of naturally antibacterial.
Sean Ferrell: Antibiotic. Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Right. So again, there's not. This is where there's more research needed. But it seems like these hydrogels might be not bacteria proof, but maybe more resistant than you might expect. So again, the fouling and the dirt and bacteria growth might not be a huge concern with these kind of hydrogels.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: But again, more research needed.
Sean Ferrell: Also wanted to throw in a couple of comments. They were back to back. They were both about vertical solar panel positioning. And both these viewers were questioning whether or not the heating issue might be resolved by the vertical installation. The answer is yes, they would be. But it also. We just a week ago talked about Matt's previous video in which it was about solar panels that are bifacial. And those as we talked about then and in this episode, there are people who take the bifacial panels and just put them flush with something and don't worry about the backside being efficient and gathering energy. But that is the point of the bifacial panels. So to King T. Who points out vertical installation and Data Smithy, who points out bifacial panels, both of those are solutions as well to this issue. And you are both right. If you're putting them in that position, you wouldn't necessarily need this gel because you'd be gaining advantages in different ways. Although a monofacial with the gel vertically mounted isn't going to kill you. And if that becomes the trend that these panels. Do you think that this is a trend the panel manufacturers will just start using? Because it becomes a kind of like expectation in the same way that, well, yeah, your cars are designed to take an impact. Because if there was a car manufacturer that said we're not going to worry about impact, they would not sell any cars. So is that something similar here where they'll start incorporating these kind of cooling mechanisms just by default?
Matt Ferrell: My hunch is no. What I think we might end up seeing is kind of like this is an add on. Like if you hire a sole installer to do it. It's like, it seems like this gel would make sense for specific use cases. So why would a manufacturer have a different manufacturing line or different process where it's like, here's these solar panels without it, and here's these solar panels with it. It's like, just make it without it, and you can sell the product separately that an installer can just slap on the back as they're installing it. I think that's what we're likely to see if this stuff actually does catch on. Like, I could add it to mine on my roof, Just have a solar installer come, take them off, put them back on, and I get that 12% boost. That's what I think is most likely going to happen if this cat catches on. I also saw comments about like, could this work on solar? Wouldn't this, like, if you put this on the back of a bifacial, wouldn't this block the light? Yeah, it would. You would not be putting this on a bifacial panel. And that's where it's kind of like it's using the right tool for the right job. So there are certain circumstances where a bifacial panel is the right choice to use. In that case, you're not going to be doing this. In other cases, like my house, it's like I've got the solar panels monofacial directly on my roof. Maybe I'm using the gel in the back of it. So it's like, it's. It's not that one is better than the other. It's just choosing the right mix for what you're doing.
Sean Ferrell: Right. Finally, there was this from V. Siegel, who questioned your math. He writes, something is wrong here. Panels with hydrogel cooling lasted over 200% longer than unprotected panels. Let's assume 20 years lifetime for unprotected panels. So the lifetime of a cooled panel would be 300% of 20 years, equaling 60 years. The sentence is very explicit in saying that this was tested by taking the physical time lasted of 60 years. I doubt that. So I'm curious, can you parse what V. Siegel is saying here? And do you understand where in your video, like, what is the missing link here? Because I do not think you were saying these will last 60 years.
Matt Ferrell: To be very clear, I did not say this. The researcher said it. What I said is almost directly from their research paper. Where it's not directly from the research paper is when I the sentence before this, I had talked about the real world testing in Saudi Arabia and then In Buffalo, New York. And I said, after this testing, the calculations they came out with were blank. And because of the way I phrased those two sentences back to back, it gives the impression that they tested it for 60 years. And it's like, that's on me. That's not the researcher's fault, but it is 300%. And like, I pulled these numbers up again. For anybody that's interested, what they. There's a industry standard way of, of calculating how long a panel will last. It's called time to failure ttf. And so these researchers, based on their real world, real world, real world testing, as well as the calculating the TTF, they said unprotected panels will last 18.6 years for their time to failure. Cooled panels are 64.6 years. Time to failure, the extension is 46 years. And then if you do some division here, the total lifespan is 347% of the original. So when the paper said 300%, they were rounding down, okay, calculation. So again, the time to fail or the ttf, the way that stuff is calculated in the research paper and in the industry as the whole is kind of standardized. So this is not some research team to go on and creating rogue math and coming up with their own wacky calculations. This is, yes, 60 years. So it's like, you may doubt it, but that's what their research shows.
Sean Ferrell: That's what they're saying, right?
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: This falls, I think, to circle back to what we started with, this falls back into built in obsolescence. The panel manufacturers may be perfectly comfortable saying this is a 20 year product and they are building their product with a 20 year window in mind so that they know they'll have consumers coming back in two decades. But just like we were talking about, if you have the ability to extend the life of the product on your own, and in this case, it would be slapping some gel that sweats on the back of the panel and you can turn it into a 60 year product. Yeah, I think exactly. Most consumers would probably think that that gel was worth it.
Matt Ferrell: I would.
Sean Ferrell: So, Matt, last question. Are you waiting for somebody to say, yeah, this is now in the market. You can hire a contractor to go up there and slap it on the back of the panels.
Matt Ferrell: Oh my God. If this came out as an actual product, yes. I'd be contacting somebody saying, hey, can you help me put this on my panels?
Sean Ferrell: Okay. So, yeah, I asked that question for this reason. Listeners, any of you with solar panels, how would you feel about that? Would you like, Matt, jump on the bandwagon and say get me that gel and slap it on my face because I want to sweat. Wait, no, that's not what Matt said. That's what I'm saying because I, as I mentioned at the top of the episode am in a very humid basement. Listeners jump into the comments. Let us know what you think. Don't forget commenting, liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support the channel and we appreciate that support. If you'd like to support us more directly you can go to the join button on YouTube or you can go to stilltbd fm, click the become a supporter button there. Both those ways allow you to throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts and then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of slapping gel onto our foreheads. Thank you so much everybody for taking the time to watch or listen and we'll talk to you next time.