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Matt and Sean talk about the impact of AI on our electric bills and more.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, How AI is Destroying Your Electric Bill https://youtu.be/n8m1BCzvGCA?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7oiN-erZtwugd0muTdQXnU
Matt and Sean talk about the impact of AI on our electric bills and more.
Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, How AI is Destroying Your Electric Bill https://youtu.be/n8m1BCzvGCA?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7oiN-erZtwugd0muTdQXnU
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 how we're all paying for AI and what we might be able to do about it. Welcome everybody to Still To Be Determined. This is the follow up podcast to Undecided with Matt Ferrell which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. I am not Sean Ferrell. I am AI. No, I'm not AI. I'm his older brother Sean. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi, I write some horror and I write some stuff for kids. And we like to follow up on Matt's podcast, his channel by diving into your comments there and your comments here. But before we get into that, I would like to introduce my co host. Guess who it is. That's right, it's that Matt. That Matt. How you doing? How are you today?
Matt Ferrell: Good, I'm doing good. How about you?
Sean Ferrell: I'm doing okay. As we were recording this, we are looking forward to a Thanksgiving weekend and this will not be released until after said weekend. So I'll ask you, do you think you'll have a nice Thanksgiving?
Matt Ferrell: Yes, Sean, I think I will have a very good Thanksgiving.
Sean Ferrell: I hope you do. I also think I will have a nice Thanksgiving. And to our viewers and listeners, we hope you have had, past tense, a lovely Thanksgiving as we move into December and the end of 2025. Good Lord, how did that happen? Anyway, before we get into our conversation about Matt's most recent, which is about AI, the costs that have been incurred by all of us as a result of data centers driving up the cost of electricity. And we're going to find out soon that that's not just a us problem. We always like to take a look at what you had to say about our previous episode. So from episode 286, we dove into the mailbag and, well, we found out what you put your milk in. That's right, from BK Nesheim. He writes in Norway, we went from glass to paper. This is in response to our conversation about microplastics, plastics, everything plastic and what do we do about it? And a couple of companies that are looking for ways to say, hey, we can help you with that by finally being able to recycle in a cost efficient manner. But as Matt pointed out, his recent travels have shown him that, yeah, lots of places just use lots and lots of glass. And isn't it great because glass can be recycled as many times as you want it to. But BK jumps in to say, yeah, we went from glass to paper. And the maximum size of the packaging is what you would call A half gallon, a very high percentage is taken out in the waste and used in different products. And in the end, if it ends up getting burnt, it is carbon neutral because they grow so many trees. So that's another option. That was what I was thinking of as we were talking about plastics last year. You brought up glass. I was thinking about the beauty of cardboard and paper, especially if they can figure out more effective ways of the paper that doesn't have the plastic coating.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: From being able to be recycled. So it becomes okay, like, let's use. Let's use paper. But let's use the paper that's not the bad paper. And as BK points out, carbon neutral. You grow trees, you capture carbon. You use the trees, you release carbon. If you grow more trees, you capture carbon.
Matt Ferrell: Well, I was just in Japan and we went. I went to Japan. Sean and I ate at a McDonald's. Yes. Don't judge me. We ate at a McDonald's.
Sean Ferrell: Consider yourself judged.
Matt Ferrell: Instead of fries, you can get edamame the side. It's really kind of cool.
Sean Ferrell: Lovely.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, yeah, it's very lovely. It's like, oh, this food can be healthy at McDonald's. That's nice. But the straws that they had were paper straws that had some kind of like a wet. I think it was a wax. Just to keep it. So that didn't, like. Yep, soggy. And like, every straw I've ever had gets soggy within a matter of minutes. And it's awful. And it has a weird texture in your mouth. This never got that. It. It almost felt like just a thick, normal straw because of this wax coating. It's like.
Sean Ferrell: I don't know.
Matt Ferrell: Part of me was like, this is genius. Why is this not being done everywhere?
Sean Ferrell: Why.
Matt Ferrell: Why do some paper straws just really suck? If you get it. Sorry. But I was wondering. It's just another one of those things of. In my world travels, I'm seeing more and more things outside of the US that are just like, why are we not doing this? Because it just makes so much more sense.
Sean Ferrell: There was also some discussion about the plastics that are not just the recyclable plastics. You know, we end up using products and then we say, well, I'm done with this, and I throw it in the recycling bin. Does anybody actually recycle it? Who knows? But then there was this part of it from Creehan who says, I so badly wanted to jump into the comments on Matt's recycling video, but I watched it downloaded offline while traveling and forgot to go back to it afterwards. Well, that's too bad, isn't it? Creehan, you lost your opportunity to comment. Goodbye. No, that's not. Thank you, Creehan, for jumping into these comments because it gives me the opportunity to share it here. He continues. I'm super curious to know if during the research for this one, if the team came across anyone trying to use any, Any of these techniques to remove microplastics from drinking water or rivers or something even more ambitious. Just a thought. Thanks for the content either way, boys. I really appreciate it. So, yes, recycling of that plastic jug, that egg container, whatever you've got in your house that ends up in the recycling bin. That's great. We talked about microplastics before. There is the ongoing gigantic question mark with, in my head, a little parenthetical behind it that says, well, of course it does. Does it have an impact on us because it is in our bodies and we do not know what it might do? Yes, I think I would bet we're all safe to assume it's not. Great.
Matt Ferrell: Going on a limb there, Sean.
Sean Ferrell: Color me, Color me cautious, but I'm just going to go out on a. On a long wagging tree branch and say, I'd be willing to bet I don't want plastic in my body.
Matt Ferrell: Yes.
Sean Ferrell: But there is nothing I can do about it, and it's kind of everywhere. So the question becomes, in this research for this topic, did you in fact see anything about microplastics?
Matt Ferrell: I will give you a wild guess. Take a guess, Sean. What is it?
Sean Ferrell: No, that's correct, sir.
Matt Ferrell: There is nothing to do with microplastics. You can filter it out of the water, like we can filter it out, but there's nothing that you would do with that. You basically would just toss it, burn it, whatever there's. Eat it, just. Whoa.
Sean Ferrell: Should have thought that one through.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, I mean, just. I mean, if you think about it, microplastics, the amount that you're going to be getting, like, if. If we're already having trouble getting plastics just to be recycled because it's more expensive than virgin plastic. You do. How much microplastic would you have to filter out of water to actually get enough to be able to do something meaningful with it?
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: It's just. No, the most we can do is just filter it out so that we can try to reduce how much we're getting into our bodies? Which. Yes, please stop that.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, yeah, let's stop that. And here's another question which I'm going to ask it and then later on I'll just be Depressed. It's fine. Are they finding microplastics in, like, just everything? Is it just like it's in our drinking water? Is it also in our beef and our celery? And, like, am I just like, I'm going to eat this salad? Because the salad is healthy, but it's in the dressing.
Matt Ferrell: They have found microplastics in Antarctica.
Sean Ferrell: Moving on.
Matt Ferrell: That's my answer to that.
Sean Ferrell: Moving on to the best worst comment from last week's episode. We were, of course, talking about Betteridge's Law regarding headlines on YouTube. And RyuKagodesu jumps into the comments to say, does Betteridge's Law of headlines hold true in real life? Question mark. Tune in for more. Well played, RyoKegaDesu. Well played. On now to our discussion about Matt's most recent. This is the hidden cost behind the AI boom, which of course, no, Betteridge’s law at play here. This is the cost behind the AI boom, which is, yeah, they built these processing plants for AI and guess what they use. If you said electricity, you're right. And if you think that that means electricity costs are going up, you're right. Again, you're all. It really kind of boils down. I mean, all of that is kind of a. Well, duh. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You build these things that are going to use intense amounts of electricity, and you're going to see the cost go up because supply and demand. And you're also going to see, well, as we. Anybody who uses the Internet could tell you, companies, they're trying to put it into everything. So you gotta. You basically have to turn it off in Google to not get it involved. So.
Matt Ferrell: Well, Sean, I saw a water bottle at CES last year that had AI, and when I saw that I was mute, it was just like, no. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Now, here is the thing that made me so unreasonably angry. It made me want to punch you.
Matt Ferrell: Okay.
Sean Ferrell: And you had nothing to do with it?
Matt Ferrell: No.
Sean Ferrell: Sean's getting punchy, folks.
Matt Ferrell: That's right.
Sean Ferrell: Sean's getting punchy. So the question marks around this one, the how do we curtail this? How do we put in place policies and cost sharing so that, yes, you end up with an improved grid without putting the burden on the people who. No consumer was out there saying, gosh, give me AI plants in my neighborhood. And then when their electricity bills go up, they're not like, well, yay, at least I'm supporting AI. That's not what's happening here. So the question marks around this one, it falls into every conceivable path. There are government actions that can be taken. There are policy approaches, There are corporate practices by the companies that are building these, and then there's our usage in our own homes. Matt pointed out one of them. Well, if you are doing what you can to lower your overall energy intake via solar panels or some other sustainable means of energy production in your own home. All of the above. All of the above. So the question that Matt sent out was, what do you think is a way to help lower this cost on the general public? And there was a lot of commentary on that question alone, like this one from Herb, who says, simply tell the government to stop closing power plants and to stop regulating how much solar a homeowner can install on their homes. If I can fit a 35 kilowatt array, let me put it up regardless of my usage. So this is a little bit of advice, advocacy for, well, let's not decommission power plants just to decommission power plants. I think that Herb is maybe. I'm going to put words into Herb's mouth and say, Herb is maybe looking at power generation across the board that would include things like coal. And it seems like he's saying, yeah, don't decommission them just to decommission them, but also on the personal level, freeing up the individual homeowners from regulations regarding what they can put on their home.
Do you want to talk about the restrictions? Are they equal across the board from state to state? Because one of the things we talked about here in the US Context is there are wildly different regulations regarding what you can do and how you do it from state to state and even sometimes from county to county in the United States. So there's not a universal approach to this across the US and so what kinds of regulations is Herb talking about and what would your take beyond. Yeah, let people do what they want as far as production in their home?
Matt Ferrell: Well, when it comes to solar, like for your home, that's grid tied, which is most of the installations. Different states have different rules. Like, if you're in California, there's other states that do this the same way. It's like, I think it's like you can only put on enough solar to generate what you would use, like up to 105% of what you'd actually use or 110% of what you'd actually use. So if over the course of a year you're using X amount of energy, you can only use that much plus additional 5% or 10% to figure out the size of your solar array in Massachusetts. It's not done that way where I am. It's done where there's just kind of a hard cap. It's like a residential person cannot install more than. I think it's 20 or 25 kilowatts. I can't remember which one it is. But it's in that low 20s you can't go over. And if you're going to go over it, you have to get special permission. And even if you get approved for that special permission, there's like a second cap that you just can't go over. And it's infuriating as a homeowner of like, energy use is going up. Yeah, we're buying EVs. Like, it's like, okay, like, if you're in California and it's like you're only using this much power, so they only let you install 15 kilowatts. But then you want to buy two EVs down the road is like, now your energy use has gone way up, but they prevented you from getting that before. So now you have to add on to what you did before. It's really weird how it's being handled state to state. But in defense of utilities, I understand why they're doing that. Because you don't want to be flooding the grid with an obscene amount of power coming in the middle of the day. It creates something called the duck curve, where, like, between usage, like, because usage peaks in the morning and at night, but then solar is peaking in the middle of the day.
And so it creates this kind of like, it looks like a duck, a back of a duck when you look at the graph. And so they're trying to avoid having just so much solar flooding into the grid that it bottoms out the market where essentially there's so much power that they can't control coming in.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: It becomes less. You know, I mean, it's like almost like, we'll pay you to take this. It's like, it's so much power coming in, it's very difficult to manage. And it can cause problems for the grid. So that's why they're trying to put this stuff in check. But some of these checks feel overly restrictive. And what's interesting is there are devices like, I know there are people. I have a friend that's actually doing this who's in California. He has a Franklin home battery. And the way the Franklin system works is it allows you to set up. You have your solar array that's tied to the grid. Then you could set up a second solar array that's also plugged into this battery system. And the battery system says this solar array is grid tied, Fitting that requirement for the grid. And this one can be as big as you want. And basically what it does is the secondary array will just feed the battery up completely. And like, if your house is using gobs of energy at a certain time, it'll be pulling energy from both arrays. But essentially that second array is technically off grid. No power ever generated from that second array will ever touch the grid. So there are these technologies coming out that are finding their way around.
Sean Ferrell: Right. So you end up with restrictions and the possibility of, okay, you're pulling from your Franklin system.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, the Franklin system, whenever you're managing it all.
Sean Ferrell: So yes, you're over producing electricity and benefiting from it directly, but you wouldn't be able to bank it from the Franklin system into the grid at a time, at a later. At a later point, because it has to be completely removed from the grid.
Matt Ferrell: Correct. Basically, yes. It's clever. It's a technological kind of like solution to these policy restrictions. But again, as a homeowner, you're having to buy more equipment, which increases the cost of doing this. It's making it more complex. It's just frustrating. It feels like there's a simpler solution here. I believe Australia does this where they will actually, they actually have some level of control over a homeowner's solar production. So if the, if there is this just way, there's way too much residential solar coming in right now, they can actually basically reach out and send a signal that will turn it off right for that moment. I know there's gonna be a lot of people that be like, that's screwed up, don't do that. But if it means that you could get as much solar as you want on your home, but it gives the utility away to try to control it so that you're not overloading the grid. It feels like a decent trade off, but it's like there's no perfect solution across the board here. It's like there has to be some kind of give and take.
Sean Ferrell: I also wonder if there's not an approach which would be policies that would require a certain amount of battery storage.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Depending on the wattage of your array. So like, okay, you go up 5,000, you have this many batteries, you go up to 10,000. Now you have twice as many batteries, you go up to 15, you have three batteries. As a way of saying, like, you need to be filling up those tanks as well as Just producing directly from the array. So. Yeah, but the Franklin system sounds like an interesting.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, it's an interesting workaround.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, interesting workaround. So in response to the question of what would our viewers and listeners suggest be done, Papa Piggy jumped in with Data centers should be required to coat their roofs with solar wind turbines on site, where there's enough wind batteries to provide power during the night and peaks make them make more electricity. To which Tesla Mojo says Papa Piggy gets it. How often have we heard that phrase? Make it a requirement for any site sized for 50 gigawatts or above to have some sort of renewable generation and storage on site? They want to use the infrastructure, they get to pay for it. If I needed to upgrade the circuit to my house, I would be required to personally pay the cost for it. Why do they get socialism? So it's an interesting argument to simply say, yeah, let them produce what they're using as opposed to pulling as much as they are from the grid.
Matt Ferrell: Well, that's the interesting side note to this, is that actually is happening. Like most of these data centers, they sometimes have three levels of like power they're getting. There's the grid tied stuff they're getting. Then they have sometimes solar arrays and energy storage backup systems, which could be batteries or hydrogen storage production stuff that can be being done. And then there's generators, which would be like the backup of the backup. Because data centers want to be up 100% of the time, they never want to be down. So they're looking at trying to diversify where their power comes from. So at any given moment they can be getting power from multiple tutorial sources. And so the interesting thing here is they're driving up costs for consumers because they're grid tied because they want to have that source of power. But they also probably have solar panels all over the roof and a massive battery storage system. And here's the fun fact is I've talked to numerous people at different companies like Microsoft and others like Caterpillar that does a whole bunch of this stuff for data centers. And the thing that comes up again and again is there's research that shows data centers could actually end up saving us money on our grid if the utilities and the data centers kind of worked together and used the data center as energy arbitrage and energy regulation. That means like maintaining a certain voltage. We have 60 hertz on our system. And so it's like you need ways to maintain that. And when you do that, utilities will pay those companies huge money, millions of dollars a year to do this. So it's like data centers could use this as another revenue stream by letting the utility coordinate with them on when they draw power and how they draw power and do all that kind of stuff.
So it's like, there are paths forward to make this problem go away for consumers.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Matt Ferrell: But we're just not doing it in most places right now because this stuff is evolving so quickly. It's like the tech sector is running, like, move fast, break things. Meanwhile, policy and the rest of us are being like, wait, what's happening? Can you please slow down? Things are going too fast. That's kind of what's happening right now, Right?
Sean Ferrell: Well, as you point out, it's, you know, they're running to be the first.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: At a nebulous moving target.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Like, it's like, I got to be the first. What are you trying to do? We don't know yet. And we'll figure it out, and we'll figure it out when we get there. And the consumer is left saying, why is my bill $27 higher without connecting dots? Because how do you connect those dots? So my question to you, based on what you've just said, is, who is having those conversations? Are these. You said you've talked to people at Microsoft. Is this like, Joe on the workman floor of Microsoft is just like, oh, yeah, in theory you could do that. Or is Microsoft as an entity, actively beginning those conversations with some power utilities? Are power utilities reaching out to these data centers? Is anybody having these conversations? Or should we be all be writing our congresspeople and saying, hey, get them to talk to each other or regulate it. Like, what do we do? Save us Microsoft. Save us.
Matt Ferrell: My conversations with Microsoft, I've had multiple conversations with different people, and I can't quote specific people, but I can quote them as, like, an organization. From these conversations I had, they have people working there that know both sides. They know the utility side, they know the data center side, and they are having conversations like this to figure out what works best for Microsoft and how can they try to alleviate this problem for consumers. They are having those conversations for sure. But that doesn't mean every company is doing this. Is ChatGPT doing that? I have no clue. My guess would be no. So some companies, I think, are being a little more responsible about it. I've had conversations with people at Caterpillar who are, as a company, they help build out data centers, power structure, so they'll install the batteries and the generators. That's kind of what they do. They’re energy side of the business. And I brought this up to them, and they were basically saying along the lines to me of like, hell, yeah. Like, this is, yes, 100%. This is what should be done. But right now, that conversation's not happening with the right people in the room, so to speak, quite yet. So it's like they're trying to get those dots connected. So from like a caterpillar side of you, they're like, yeah, we should really be connecting these dots. And people like at Microsoft are saying, we need to connect these dots. So it is happening, but it's just not happening as fast as it needs to happen. It's kind of like my takeaway from the conversations I've had.
Sean Ferrell: It's funny because as soon as you say they're having those conversations, but not with the right people in the room. And suddenly in my head, it's somebody standing up and saying, so here's what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna talk about the ways the data centers and the power grid can be worked together and regulated in a way that benefits everybody, including the consumer. And then it cuts to a look at the room, and it's like a pirate and a guy in a Ronald McDonald costume, a chicken, a bunch of nurses and doctors, and they're all just like, why are we here?
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: We thought we were off to a good start. Is this a US Only problem? Well, Taddy Peeler shows up to say, no, I live in the Republic of Ireland. We have close to the highest electricity bills in Europe. Data centers are subsidized by the government to bring in, quote, capital and investment. I loathe AI LLMs with a passion. It is I. Ireland is an interesting case because Ireland managed to put itself in a position where it became a tech center of the globe. And they did it. I mean, they did it so sneakily, like nobody noticed it was happening. And then suddenly it was. I was watching a movie from Disney, and the special effects computer animation section of the credits came up the screen. And of course, that section in any movie is there's hundreds of names. And I was accustomed to, as that part of the credits came up to see a lot of Korean names. And what was coming up were names like Shannon o'. Malley. And I was just like, well, that's surprising. And I realized, oh, like, something has happened, and that's become more and more regular. So you're seeing Ireland step up as a leader effectively in the tech sector globally, and which is great. Diversification is a wonderful thing. And having all of that housed in just one part of the world is not going to be good for consumers everywhere. But then you have this angle, which is the government is subsidizing the consumers are paying some of the highest electricity rates. What do you do about it? So Ireland is dealing with it, we're dealing with it. In your research, were you seeing other parts globally of the world where the same thing is taking place, or is it focused in those places that have the highest tech sector concentration? And it doesn't really spill into certain.
Matt Ferrell: Parts of the world yet we did see evidence of it in other areas of the world, for sure. But this might be a bias of my own when I say this, but it's like from what I was saying, it seems to be a little bit more here than other places because there are some policies and things in other countries, especially in Europe, that might help to keep this a little more in check than others. Where in the US it feels a little like the Wild west and a little utilities are basically monopolies here. So it's like it. It's not great, but it does like Ireland, we were seeing things like for Germany, people talking about this in France, there's, you know, this is something that does seem to be pervasive.
Sean Ferrell: Are companies, Are companies like Google and Microsoft, are they operating data centers globally or are they operating data centers in one country? All of everywhere.
Matt Ferrell: They're everywhere.
Sean Ferrell: You heard it here first, folks. We're living in the future.
Matt Ferrell: That's right.
Sean Ferrell: Buckle up. Yeah, I don't like it either. Finally, the best worst comment. You've been waiting for it, Matt. Here it comes from JoPo. It always feels like it's JoPo. So JoPo, keep up the good work. Jopo writes, I asked Chat GPT if AI was increasing electricity rates. It said don't worry about it. And Matt Ferrell is a bad influence on you. Thank you, JoPo. Thank you.
Matt Ferrell: That's great.
Sean Ferrell: Listeners, viewers, what do you think? Do you think AI hates Matt as much as we all do? That wasn't. That wasn't the question. The question should have been, was there anything about our conversation that you think we missed? Was there anything that you were hoping Matt would talk about that he didn't? Jump into the comments and let us know. Don't forget when you're leaving a comment. Liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends are all very easy ways for you to support the channel. And we appreciate all that support. If you want to support us more directly, you can go to StillTBD.fm or you can go to the join button right here on YouTube and both ways allow you to throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts. And then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of becoming anxious about the future. Thank you so much, everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen, and we'll talk to you next time.