232: Weird Solar Panel Technology - Algae

https://youtu.be/RZmLzqkVLD0

Matt and Sean talk about weird solar panel technology … algae. It’s a topic that can really GROW on you. Yeah, I said it. Does this weird type of weird science interest you?

Watch the Undecided with Matt Ferrell episode, The Weird Science Behind Living Solar Panels https://youtu.be/v8jsWkU6HdI?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi66M5ZJIZziqyRVVGmISv8Z

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Creators & Guests

Host

Matt Ferrell

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

Host

Sean Ferrell

Co-host of Still TBD and Trek in Time Podcasts

What is Still To Be Determined?

Join Matt Ferrell from the YouTube Channel, Undecided, and his brother Sean Ferrell as they discuss electric vehicles, renewable energy, smart technologies, and how they impact our lives. Still TBD continues the conversation from the Undecided YouTube channel.

On today's episode of Still to be Determined, we're talking about from my heart and from my hand, why don't people understand our intentions? Weird. Ooooooh. Weird science. That's right, everybody. Welcome everybody to Still to be Determined, which is of course the follow up podcast to Undecided with Matt Ferrell.

And as usual, I'm Sean Ferrell. I am Matt's older brother. I'm also a writer. I write some sci fi and I write some stuff for kids. Like my recently released The Sinister Secrets of the Fabulous Nothings, available bookstores everywhere. That's my pitch. And with me as always is my brother, Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which of course takes a look at emerging tech and its impacts on our lives.

And Matt, how are you doing today?

There's two quick things I want to bring up. One, I texted Sean a few weeks ago. That my dog, Willow, finally submitted her book review of one of Sean's books. She had gotten ahold of his book, Numb, and had just shredded the cover of the book. And Sean, two days ago, she got ahold of another one of your books and did the same thing to that one.

So she's singling out your books. I don't know what that means about your books, but clearly it's setting dogs afire. So you've got a good audience there for the canines out there.

Yeah, from what I've heard online and from other people who share, uh, similar feedback, dogs really tear through my work. Oh, Sean.

Okay. Yeah. All

right. Yeah.

You can see, everybody, you can see puns run in the family. Um, the other thing, the other thing I want to bring up the

book.

Yes. The other thing I want to bring up is, uh, we're recording this on August 18th, which is the one year anniversary of moving into this house. This new hermetically sealed home that I've got.

And yesterday I started going through and crunching, cause I'm getting ready to do kind of a one year later video about like, how's it worked out? What are the kinks that we found? Energy use all that kind of stuff. And uh, I've been up to my eyeballs doing data analysis, exporting numbers and breaking things down.

And I realized, man, I am such a nerd. I find this so much fun. Is that wrong?

This, I think this is very funny that you're about to turn 40. 41? 50. No. You're about to turn 50. Wrong decade. Right. But you're about to turn 50. Yes. And you just now realized that you're a nerd.

I didn't realize how much of a nerd I was until I was like, Oh, that graph is awesome.

Wait, I'm getting, I'm nerding out over a graph. I am such a nerd. Oh boy.

I embraced, I embraced my nerddom a long, long time ago. I can't even tell you how long ago it was. Anyway, as we always do, we like to revisit the mailbag to see what you had to say about our previous episodes before we get into the new content.

So let's drop into the back, the way back machine and see what you had to say about our previous episode. This was Matt's long form interview with Nicolas Orellana, who is the founder of O Innovations and they had a discussion about the O Innovations circular turbine model. And it was the long form of the interview which Matt had previously edited down for his Undecided video, which is a more condensed version of the same content.

There was actually some confusion in The comments I saw that people were wondering where and when did you originally drop the original episode? So just pointing out for viewers and listeners, if you see one of these 30 to 40 minute long conversations between Matt and somebody who really knows what they're talking about, That's the raw interview and where you'll find the condensed version is on Undecided.

So we try to share it here as a way for those people who really want a much deeper dive to have access to the actual complete conversation.

That's true 90 percent of the time. I actually have a, we actually have an interview coming up on the podcast that is going to be 100 percent the podcast. There is no earlier episode.

But that's the tease. I'll just leave it there.

Yeah. It's a good interview. It's a really good interview. So there was a lot of discussion about the new model, uh, wind turbine. And this is the turbine that is intended to be used in environments where you have lots of wind direction changes and high speed winds, such as an urban environment atop buildings where the natural funneling of the wind ends up

creating like cascading changes to the direction. And you wouldn't want to put a propeller or a classic wind turbine in that location, but this wind turbine is designed to be able to capture that more chaotic wind. And there was a lot of conversation about the power that might be able to be captured by that.

Like this comment from Monowheel Croatia. Who wrote him to say, I recall from childhood how we'd craft kites and fly them high about 20 to 30 meters up when we were at the beach, reaching a certain altitude seemed almost magical. Could this height range be suitable for deploying the turbines of this kind?

Lifting the turbine on a tethered balloon and the tether is the electrical cable. We've actually had conversations, Matt, about something that is similar to this technology. It's very, very tricky to say, okay, we're going to put. I mean, it would almost be terrifying to put a wind turbine on a kite and say, yeah, that's a, you know, fastly spinning propeller.

And if something catastrophic happens, it's gonna fall to the earth. I don't know that that would be the thing you do, but there are some companies that are researching utilizing kite technology. The kite itself. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want to

talk a little bit about that? Yeah. There's, there's a couple of companies that have these kites and the, basically they go in the air and imagine them doing kind of figure eights in the air.

The motion that it's creating, the tension line that it's got is basically generating electricity in a generator that's on the ground. And so it's something akin to this. It's not like they're suspending some massive turbine in the air, it's the kite itself and they're just using the kinetic motion of that kite to generate the electricity.

It's really fascinating. I just don't see that being a widespread thing. It seems like a niche of a niche of a niche, uh, for your use case scenario. But it's like, time will tell how well it works. Cause there's a couple of companies actually trying to make this a thing. So we'll see. If

I remember correctly, when we talked about it originally, and I don't even want to guess about when this conversation took place, but I want to say it was a couple of years ago, uh, back that it seemed to be most directly tied to, uh, Like, ocean transport as, you know, the utility that it would be connected to.

So you'd have a ship or a boat or a yacht that's out somewhere where the wind is just nonstop and they'd be able to fly this thing and power a small amount of their power needs. It wouldn't be the sort of thing where you would be flying a kite and then hydrofoil up and just rocketing across the water at a hundred miles an hour.

That's not the intended goal here. It would be low level electric productions that you would be able to conserve on, on energy while you're just sitting, uh, on the, on the water. But I wanted to go back briefly to Monowheel's setup of when he was a kid, flying the kites, I don't know, I mean, I imagine you must remember this, but Matt and I used to fly a lot of kites when we were kids, we would go behind our elementary school, And I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before, perhaps even in the episode in which we talked about the kite energy production technology.

Somewhere on that hill, that mountain behind our elementary school are the skeletons of dozens of kites. Because as Monowheel mentions, there is a magical moment once the kite gets high enough where it stops being turbulent and suddenly it becomes very still. Yeah. And that point when we were flying kites behind this elementary school was usually at a point where the kite was, I mean, we would usually have what, a spool of string that would be what, 500 feet?

Of kite string. Yeah. And then we would get to that 500 feet and suddenly it would go dead silent. The kite would be perfectly still until it wouldn't be. And then it would crash into the trees atop of this mountain. And it was literally a mountain. So there was no way for us to get this thing back. So there would be this little speck go straight down into the woods.

Yeah. And occasionally you'd be able to free something by just like yanking really hard and you would see it magically pop back out of the trees. But for the most part, Those kites that we had that either were emblazoned with Star Wars logos, or made to look like a bat, or an eagle, or a dragon. Well, somewhere on that mountain are the remnants of those, those kites, and also 500 yards of string, probably.

There was also this comment, and it was reflected by a lot of people, Doug OWT, who jumped in to say that they would like a follow up episode six months, a year from now to follow up with this technology. What was the timeline that the company is actually looking at as far as like, okay, we're about to take one and mount it on top of this building.

It's basically it's

within the next year. Cause they were talking about how they've got this deal with Spotify. I think it was, and they're going to be right now they're raising funds to work with basically a manufacturer to make the final units that they're going to put on the Spotify building and that kind of stuff.

And they're expecting that to happen within the next year. So if I was going to do an update on this, it might be like this time next year, follow up on it, see how the test went, what kind of data they've gotten out of it and what their next steps are. But they're, it's basically the research and development is essentially done.

And now it's manufacture, get it out there, get the data, all that kind of stuff.

So they're in the home stretch. And for those of you following along at home, if we do follow up on this in a year, it will be the second anniversary of Matt moving into his home. Finally, there was this from Darth Sirius who said, Matt remembered what I said.

Ha ha. I don't need a home wind turbine. I need a silent wind Turbine. If these are truly working close to silent, even with vibration dampening or whatever, that's a massive upgrade over existing technology. Shadded about this from time to time, anytime wind turbines come up, somebody in the comments or one of us will mention, yeah, having something that sounds a lot like a perpetual whoosh in the background might start to grate.

How truly silent is something like this tech? And do you think that it's ever possible to get something quiet enough to make home use actually viable? I mean, they didn't

have any data for their, like, when you're talking about decibel levels, it's like, you know, 30 to 40 decibels is like a whisper. So if they could get something down to that 40 to 50 decibels at a slowish wind speed, you're talking, and it's on the side of a building, which is going to be quieter than somebody talking.

It's like, that's, that's essentially silent at that point. Um, but if it's getting up into that 70, 80 decibel level, it's like, you're going to be hearing that sucker on the side of the building. And if it gets even louder than that, it's like, not good. Um, so Typically these turbines that you see, uh, have ratings on them for decibels at like a specific wind speed.

Like here's the decibel level at two meters per second or four meters per second. And oftentimes you see things like, Oh, it's 50 decibels, 60 decibels kind of a range. So my hope would be, it's going to be lower than that, whatever we typically see on a small turbine, um, for their noise levels. But yeah, to me, this is the giant, huge question mark on all of this technology, because if imagine you're, you're working on the 12th floor of a building doing your work and they've attached one of these things right outside your window.

If

that thing is making vibrations and noises that you're going to be feeling and hearing, it's going to be incredibly distracting. So I hope that's not the case.

Or if it's mounted on a home, if the technology for dampening the vibration isn't enough, you're going to potentially have a thrumming in the building itself that could be something you notice.

Thank you, everybody, for your comments on that episode. As we always say at the closing of every episode, your comments really are a huge part of how we view engagement with our conversations. So thank you for taking the time to drop in to the comments on that episode. On now to our conversation about Matt's most recent.

This, of course, is the weird science behind living solar panels. And Weird doesn't even begin to describe, I mean, the image of this, how legit is this image? This is a doctored image. This is a doctored image. This is, this is intended to be eye catching. Yes. So this is not legit, like what they would look like, but we're talking about.

If you take, if

you take what they're doing, this is kind of what they might look like, because it's like they're at lab scale. So if you take what they're doing at lab scale and you make it larger, It, in theory, would look like this. So that's what this was. This is to show what the

theory of what this might look like is.

So do you want to give us a quick, like, thumbnail sketch? A growing medium inside a solar panel which is producing energy, but give us the highlights of how is this working? What is it doing?

They're, I mean, at solar panels, you've got, it's kind of like a battery in a way. It's like you've got your anode and your cathode, you've got your two like layers where the electrons are moving between and you've got some kind of medium in between that's knocking electrons and creating holes and doing all this kind of stuff.

I've talked about it in solar panel videos before. What they're doing in the, in between these two layers is they're literally just putting algae. And when the solar radiation hits it, the algae is kind of growing and it creates this energy pathway of like electrons moving around. It generates electricity as the algae is kind of growing and getting stressed.

That in a nutshell is what this is. And that's why I call this the weird science of living solar panels, because this is kind of a breakthrough in that regard, because this is, this is not new, like photosynthesis, that kind of a thing is not a new thing that we understand, but this is the first time a system like this has been created with a living algae to do this.

Um, that it's kind of a first. So that's what was fascinating to me about this, whether or not this becomes a real thing. It's like, I got to talk about this. This, this is my first reaction was that's bananas. Having an actual living solar panel. It's like, it feels very steampunk to me.

Yeah,

it does. It feels very like technology and organic life just smashing together and creating something completely bananas.

Uh, that's why I was just fascinated by this.

Yeah, it seems, I mean, not to put a negative spin on it, but it seems dystopian. Like, well, like somebody in a post apocalyptic wasteland wanders onto a farm where they're producing energy by growing algae in large tanks. Like it's, it seems like, like, Oh, we have no choice, but to do this as opposed to, yeah, it's a

brand new panel, you put it on your house. Well, what do you mean what's it filled with? It's filled with algae, of course. Basically people jerry rigging these systems so they can create electricity

and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. There's the question for me is the, what's the trade in and out of the algae over its life cycle?

Like that's.

But that's the thing is like, this is so new, Sean. I have no idea. It's like, like in some of these papers, it was like, it like, it could last for like 20 something, like 21 or 30 days or something like that. It was basically, you're talking about three or four weeks. So imagine this stuff can survive for a month.

It's like, well, that's not exactly viable for a product of like, climb up in your roof and once a month, swap out the algae in your panels. It's like, that's not going to be. You know, it's like taking care of a pool. Make sure you replenish your algae, kids. Uh, that's not gonna, that's not gonna happen. So the, the question is how long can they make this stuff survive?

Is there a way to do this where it would just keep taking care of itself and stay alive and do what it's doing? So who knows, Sean? Who knows? I couldn't help but

wonder, yeah, in the vein of one of our commenters that I want to share the comment of, uh, if this might not be a place where the electrical production is the byproduct of a different goal.

We have this comment from Charles Gates who said years ago, Arizona farmers were doing algae. There are a bunch of huge dairy and beef farms, so they feed the algae, the crap, and then harvest the algae for food, creating a circle. So, yep. I couldn't help but wonder if this is one of those things where, okay, in an agricultural setting, having a byproduct of electrical production involved in the life cycle of something that is effectively feed and waste management, that seems like you've got a circle that has a third point to it, which is yet another benefit.

So maybe there's a way of incorporating that into the overall goal of the technology.

That kind of makes me think of, uh, was it the end of Back to the Future, where, where we're going, we don't need roads, where they open up, it's the Mr. Fusion and he's basically just chucking banana peel and he empties a beer can and throws the can in and closes it up.

There is, you could totally see that dystopian future you're talking about, where it's like, what if I'm on this farm? It's like you're scooping the algae and you're just tossing it into some kind of hopper. And that hopper then feeds into a machine that's just automatically swapping things out and keeping the algae going.

And it's not like you have to manually do a whole bunch of stuff. It's just like, just throw this slop in here and that slop will then get turned into electricity later. There's crazy stuff that you can

picture. I always appreciated the comedic value of Doc Brown in that moment, emptying the can. And then throwing in the can.

Yeah. It's like, why did you empty it? Like, why did you empty that? If this has a path to being utilized in some fashion, but they're currently just at the lab stage. And the lab stage is effectively saying like, we know this is true. Take the algae, put these things in electricity. We have an LED light that we can light up based on this.

Is there anybody actively coming at this and saying, Oh, we're going to dump some dollars into this and see where we can go. Not that I

found, not that my team found. It's like, this is just like, this is kind of a one off kind of. There's a lot of research being going into like the photo taking like real life photosynthesis and finding ways that we can take advantage of this process to generate electricity for ourselves.

There's a lot of research into that. So this is like a, one of the branches coming off of that. There's a reason why I called this episode the weird science of like living solar panels. Because I am not standing up on a box saying this is the future, like this is going to be it. This is the sure thing.

It's more of a You're all going to be driving algae cars. No, that is not what I'm saying. So it's like, there's many technologies like this that I find fascinating. I want to talk about it, but I want to talk about it in a way that's clear or hopefully clear that I'm not saying this is the future, but this is something really cool that we should probably keep an eye on because there's some crazy stuff that might spring out of this down the road.

Uh, because this is literally in the lab. This is in the lab. This is not a practical thing that could actually work in the wild. But you can see the seeds of ideas. It's research like this that causes a different research group to find something that is an offshoot over here that leads into something that could potentially become a thing down the road.

But this in itself, this is not going to be a product that you buy. This is, this is a lab scale exploration of, wow, we actually figured out how to get electricity out of living algae. It's like, well, what can we do with that now? So that, that to me was most exciting. What can we do with that now

is the next step.

And we sometimes on the channel talk about things being in the lab. And I think it's worth in our discussion, remembering to separate the difference between something being in the lab, like scientists saying like, Oh, we take this, we put this in the thing and this light turns on the difference between that and R and D research and development, the actual development of a product.

Where that's also a lab, but it is lab with an application in mind that they're trying to reach. And when we say something is in R& D lab development, that's still a stage several steps removed from it's on the store shelves and you can go buy it. But it's closer to that and it has a different goal. So what we're talking about here is really, uh, Matt talked about the realization that he had, the breakthrough he had about realizing he's a nerd.

This research is probably a bunch of nerds in a lab who are saying like, let's nerd out over this algae. Look at this. This is, this is excellent stuff. There were other comments that I wanted to share and this one I think is an interesting one. Matt, you just kind of stumbled into something in saying, there's a reason why I called this episode the weird science of, maybe you need to have a weird science of dot, dot, dot as a recurring theme on the channel because this kind of technology.

is really like this is the like the sci fi writer tickle at the back of my brain like that's that's This stuff is fun to talk about from that angle, but there's also this aspect from Mr. Justin Otis, who came in to say he appreciated the excellent video and then said something that might be helpful to incorporate into your videos would be assigning a technology readiness level score to whatever the topic is for each one.

This is something that NASA does for assessing how far along a particular new technology is and how close it is to being able to be fielded. Something like that would be helpful for viewers to understand if the particular topic of a video is still something that's theoretical, been demonstrated in the lab, or is being scaled and ready for mass market deployment.

I really liked this comment as something that would be, I mean, it's not just useful, I think it would be a great way for starting the engagement of our conversations here about the technology as kind of a flag for, yeah, we're not recommending you run down to your local department store and see if you can get the algae panels.

But we are talking about something that's interesting, unique, and kind of head scratching. And it's like, holy cow, is that true? Like that, that's the angle here. So I think that that's an interesting, uh, recommendation. I really liked it. Um,

for me, I'm a huge, huge fan of this comment. I actually shared this comment with my team.

And the Wikipedia about how NASA does this and the rating levels, there's like nine levels they go through. And so we're actively right now trying to figure out how we kind of start to assess and put the stuff onto the scale just like that. Yeah. We're going to start trying to experiment with this because it's, it's, it's a fantastic suggestion.

And then it made me realize, uh, gentlemen, I know, uh, Dave from the YouTube channel, just have a think. He's like my UK clone. We're both 50 something bald guys talking about sustainable tech. He does this on some of his videos and it made me realize kind of facepalm. Why am I not doing that? Cause it's, it's brilliant.

It's probably he's already doing it. The suggestions are fantastic. We're going to start to try to do this. And part of the idea behind the Weird Science Sean is I do want to make this a regular thing. We have plans for future Weird Science episodes because there's. These advances that happen that I want to just nerd out, geek, geek out about.

Like, that is so crazy cool. Will it be a thing? I have no idea, but it's super cool. Just like what they figured out. It's like, just for the sake of learning. It's like, I find it fascinating and it's not about, Oh, this may be the future of batteries or the future of energy storage or anything like that.

It's just literally like, let's just geek out a little bit about what they figured out. Yeah. It's really cool. So that, that's the idea is that the weird science episodes would be something in that sci fi brain. Part, you know, that part of your brain,

uh, that's the whole plan. I completely endorse that idea and I look forward to incorporating it in our conversations in the future and couldn't help but think that the way you should have the scale work on your channel is when you give the rating, put it in a series of the number of your heads.

Like,

finally, I wanted to share two more comments. This one from Denir who jumped in to say, my plan is to hide while the algae revolution fights the robot revolution, then welcome the winner as our new overlords. Denir, very, very reasonable response to all of this. And I'm going to like everything Matt just said about Mr.

Justin Otis's comment. I'm saying about your comment, I'm going to use your guidance here as my way forward. And finally, Ezra Iramez asked a simple question, what kind of math do fish like? Algebra. This, of course, is, I mean, hat tip to Ezra. Very well done. Thank you. This, of course, is a joke that was famously read at, I believe it was Albert Einstein's funeral.

Don't quote me on that. So, listeners, what did you think about all of this? Do you think that we're on the verge of Interesting biotech breakthroughs like algae in our solar panels, or do you think that this is just interesting fodder for the sci fi writer to, uh, to tease out some tech that seems otherworldly?

Let us know in the comments and don't forget the comments really do feed the content, not only of this program, but of the mothership Undecided with Matt Ferrell. Don't forget, if you'd like to support the show, the quick and easy way for you to do that is to simply like this video. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your friends.

Those are simple ways for you to support the program. If you'd like to more directly support us, you can click on the join button on YouTube, or you can go to stilltbd. fm and click the become a supporter button there. Both of those ways allow you to throw coins at our heads, and once the welts heal, we get down to the hard business of talking about algae growing in our solar panels.

Thank you so much everybody for taking the time to watch or listen, and we'll talk to you next time.