Hi everyone. Welcome to Still to Be Determined. Today we're gonna be talking about self-healing solar. Yes, you heard me correctly. We're talking about solar panels that repair themselves. Oh boy. I mean, Matt, at this point. How close are we to a robot that has a self-healing solar panel and the robot could self repair and then it's just out there doing its thing and humans live on a spaceship where we overstuff ourselves on food and the poor little robot is lonely on the planet gathering garbage. Yep. And eventually learning how to love. Anyway, welcome to Still to be Determined, I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some scifi. I write some stuff for kids and I'm just generally curious about technology and luckily for me, my brother is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. And Matt. How are you today? I'm doing pretty well. How about yourself? Doing okay. It's been a last week. Had a day off in the middle of the week because of Juneteenth, happy Juneteenth to everybody. And as a result, every day, last week felt like Friday. Yeah. And then I got to the actual weekend. Saturday felt like Sunday, so. That may be part of why I'm wearing this kind of shirt today is that I woke up this morning feeling like I'm supposed to go to work. Right? That's, that's what's happening. What I'm trying to say is time has no meaning. It's an artificial construct and we should just do away with it. Anyway, yes. That's for our future discussion. This week we're gonna be talking about self-healing solar. This is of course for Matt's most recent Why this might be the last solar panel you'll ever need. Before we get into that, we always like to dip into the mailbag from our previous episodes and see what you had to say about our earlier conversations. And here we are. We're currently, you are currently listening to episode 2 71. Matt, can you believe it's been 271 episodes? It hurts my brain, but. What were your thoughts about episode 270? This is the conversation that Matt shared with developers of PolyFloss. Matt, do you wanna remind us quickly what PolyFloss is? They've developed a machine that's inspired by cotton candy machine, a candy floss machine where you basically melt the plastic down, it spins it into really tiny fibers and spits it out, and then you can use that fiber for making textiles or insulation or whatever you wanna do. That's basically what they've designed. People jumped in literally at the opposite ends of the pool. Uhhuh found it very interesting. There was a comment like this from drop shot 1967 who said two years ago I thought this would be a way, a good way to actually recycle. This new small scale machine looks like a good way to lower the cost of applying recycling. One thing that comes to mind is creating thin paper-like sheets, both corrugated and flat to create plastic cardboard stable in a wet environment and a more long lasting. It could, it would save on using trees for cardboard production and could be used in outdoor applications, and I don't disagree with anything that drop shot says either. However, Matt, correct me if I'm wrong, aren't industries leaning more toward paper at this point? Because paper is renewable. Whereas if all we do is create plastic cardboard, well now what do you do with the plastic cardboard? Yeah. That's one of the big problems. Yep. Yeah. Which takes us to the other end of the pool. Pixel pusher says, plastics are such a double-edged sword for recycling. Definitely good to try and make less plastic through recycling, but microplastics are still the tsunami of environmental damage we haven't seen hit yet. Every reuse of plastic creates more microplastics. Some 3D print filament is biodegradable to my understanding, but adding in dyes and other chemicals reduces that attribute. So yeah. Yeah, everything, everything that we are talking about here, I I, the double-edged sword is a big part of it. We haven't yet reached a point where we know exactly how to, for lack of a better term, undo what we do. We make a product and we send it out into the world, and we aren't yet really fully embracing how to take care of it at the end of its life. Well, those conversations are just starting really, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. Um, the one thing I would, I would caution people on. You see this on around the conversation around AI right now too. People tend to be very black or white on the issue. And plastic's good, plastic's bad, and I definitely like float in the middle of this conversation. Uh, not all plastics are bad. Plastics and polymers make life possible with the way we live today and without it. I don't know what we do. Um, there's polymers and things like that are essential to certain aspects of healthcare making us live longer. So it's like we gotta be careful to say that plastics in general are bad or good. It depends on how they're used and what we do with them when they're over, like their lifespan is over. It's like, what do we do with them? That to me is the big, like the bad part. Like we're doing nothing with it. When it's end of life hits, uh, we need to change that. On the issue of microplastics, I've been doing more and more reading on microplastics and I'm starting to kind come around to the thinking that I think our concerns about microplastics are a little overblown. And I know this is gonna be a hot take. And I'm gonna, that's a hot topic for saying that's hot topic there. Matt just stepped on the third rail. Yeah. I think I might need to make a video about this to explore it. 'cause I still need to reach out to some people and people who know way more about this than I do to talk to them about it. But everything I've been reading, it's kinda like there is no evidence. No concrete evidence that microplastics are necessarily harming us. Like we all have microplastics in our bodies right now. All of us, yeah. It's in things we eat, it's, it's just pervasive. They're finding microplastics in Antarctica. It's like it's everywhere. You can't escape it, but there is no concrete evidence showing that is increasing the likelihood of cancer or the likelihood of this disease or that disease. It's kinda like, okay, it's disturbing, but is it actually harming right us? And it's not to say that we don't need to worry about it. We should worry about, we should stop it. We should do everything we can to try to prevent this kind of stuff from happening. But I, I just, there's a lot of nuance here. I think that gets lost in some of the conversation. So I would just kind of like, just ask people to kind of like pause for a second and then try to kind of like read up on this as best you can because there is a lot of. It's not as bad as you think it is. It's still bad, but it's not quite as bad as you think. It's so, it's like take a closer look at some of the research papers and stuff that's out there. It's, it might open your eyes to some new ways of thinking about it. How new is that research? I remember the first time I came across the, yeah, discussion about climate change. Mm-hmm. Was, I'm old enough to remember when they called it global warming. And I'm old enough to remember that I was a full-blown adult when I found out about it. Mm-hmm. It was, mm-hmm. A sobering moment as I was in a coffee shop in Boston reading a news article. I think it might have been Newsweek, and it was like, there's new research into global warming and talking about the potential impacts and really kind of like walking back to my apartment in a kind of fugue state as I thought well. This can't be real can it? And at that point, the research had been going on since the 1960s, I believe. Mm-hmm. So this was a 30 year gap between a scientist saying, I think I'm gonna look into this. And a magazine saying, we're gonna write an article about it. Right. How long have people been looking at microplastics and what's the body of research there? Decades. Decades. It's like people have been looking at this for a very long time, but this is where like it drives people nuts when scientists and doctors talk about this stuff. 'cause they tend to hedge their comments a lot of times where it's like. Doctor, what, what is this condition? Well, it could be this, but it could also be this, and you may have to concern yourself about that. 'cause it's only a 20% chance that's gonna be a, a bad thing. Yeah. It's like it's, they tend to couch their things because it's, the research papers in a lot of cases are not definitive. It's one of those. It didn't prove it, it's not a problem, but it also didn't prove it is a problem. So it's kinda like, okay, we need to research this aspect of it, and you have to wait for those research papers to come out. And that's kinda what I've, I'm finding in my research on reading up about microplastics is it's, it's still a whole big bag of unknown. They're still trying to figure out around how bad it actually is. Interesting impromptu conversation about microplastics, and I do encourage you to revisit it on your main channel. I mean, there's, and if anybody knows about, got be a discussion. Yeah. If anybody listening to this is an expert in this, please chime in in the comments. Uh, definitely reach out to me. I have contact form on my website just like I wanna learn more and I'm sure everybody else wants to learn more. So please share your knowledge. Please do. Yeah. On now to our discussion about Matt's most recent. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, this is about Forever Solar. Do we have the potential of making a solar panel that can self repair? We'll start off the conversation with this response from Byron Payne who wrote in to say. I doubt there will be a huge demand for this technology because PV panels already enjoy a 25 to 30 year lifespan, and during that same time, power efficiency improves 10 to 15% motivating buyers to upgrade. The self-healing technology will be incorporated into new PV panels only if the premium is small, perhaps five to 10%. One of the things that occurred to me as I watched the video and I read comments like this where they're saying solar panels are so readily available. They have good lifespans. Mm-hmm. The efficiency will improve over time even more so the idea that you need to make sure that this panel runs at a hundred percent for 30 years, when you can get a 30 year panel that will meet 80% of your needs in that 30 year span. I found myself wondering, well, is this technology limited to solar only? Is this technology in some way able to be used in other means that the use case isn't about, well, the solar is now, the panel is repairing itself in certain ways. Mm-hmm. As opposed to, I don't know, the outer coating of a car, not a solar panel car, but a car. Right. Where the body itself could repair the dings from small stones and the wear, it's on what looks like the paint and like, is that what this technology might do? Or am I separating the panel ness? Is this self-repair due to it being a solar panel, or is the technology able to say, oh, we could put this into the paneling on the outside of the International Space Station. And it's not the solar panels alone that are protecting us, it's the paneling of the entire thing could be self preparing in some way. I am not a chemist, so take this with a gigantic grain of salt. I, you gotta look at it different from that. It's not like it's a technology that is a universal thing that you can apply to a thousand different things. It's, this stuff has been tailored for solar panels, so it's like, here's how this panel is made. We're gonna make one tiny adjustment to this polymer layer between these different surfaces that when it heats up, because a solar panel's being bombarded with heat and ray and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. It just naturally repairs itself. So it's, it's leaning into the solar panel ness of Yeah how it functions to, to make an adjustment. But what you've just brought up already exists, like you can wrap your car in a film, and I actually did this to my previous car, it's, it's basically a polymer. So you're wrapping your car in a polymer and you could take a key and scratch the surface of it, and then you leave your car out in the sun and that surface will actually soften and then go back to its original state. And so at the end of the day, just from the heat of the sun that scratch will just like disappear. Like it was never there. So this kind of stuff is already happening in different things, but it, it's kind of like you have to look at it as you're designing it for the specific use case of that thing and taking advantage of the materials that are being used for that. So yeah, this, this is not a new concept just being applied specifically for solar panels. The pro column on this is Iron Man who jumps in to say, I can see these being great for traffic signals and lighting in rural areas and for remote instrumentation setups, and I completely agreed with that. This is the kind of thing that, okay, maybe there's a weather sensor installation at the top of a mountain and getting there takes a long specific trek to get to that location and to go up there just to see how the solar panel is doing would be a frustrating and expensive effort. Having this kind of technology sitting up there would give a certain amount of reliability to the installation, but that's all gonna be dependent on cost again. This goes back to cost. And do you think that this technology, as you look at it right now, do you think, okay, this is most likely a case where we put this in the column of NASA famously spent, I forget how much money, a million dollars developing a pen that could write upside down. And they had reasons for doing this because they were like. Yeah, you're in space. You gotta write upside down. Does this technology fall into the same column? There's only one consumer, potentially those who are taking things into space. So telecom, satellites, NASA, things like that. Is this what this tech is for? I would say sort of, I'd say right now, yes. I mean the, the most of the research we talked about is still in the lab. It's not. It's still got a ways to go before it gets onto a product. But just like how we talk about a lot, technology trickles down. It's gonna be very expensive to start. So this is the kind of thing that NASA or space agencies like the ESA or other space agencies, when they're putting a satellite into orbit, they want stuff like this because it's not like you can send a repairman up to space and change out the panel on a satellite. You want it to go out there and be there for as long as possible. So this makes the most sense in those circumstances because they can justify the increased cost. But as this stuff gets more and more proven out and easier to implement, it's the type of technology that's not like when, when you look into how it actually is done, it's, it shouldn't be drastically more expensive. So you could totally see potentially down the road. This is just common par, you know, just par for the course. Right. Um, also solar panels. So solar panels go from being 30, 40 years to maybe they're 50 to 70 years before you wanna swap 'em out. Mm. And kinda going back to that first comment about, it's kind of natural that this, the evolution of solar panels increases by the efficiency increases so quickly. You're gonna wanna upgrade your panels. I would actually push back on that because you put solar panels on your roof like I did. You're putting solar panels on your roof to achieve a certain goal of energy. So like for me, from my house, I'm net zero energy. I'm producing the exact amount of energy I need over the course of a year. If a new panel comes out five years from now, that's 20% more efficient. I have zero desire to put that on my roof. I already have a system that's providing all the energy, energy I need. I'd only want to upgrade if I'm not producing enough energy for my home. That's the only reason I'd wanna upgrade. So it's like, I don't care if the, this panel is just so much more efficient. So I, I'm kind of pushed back on that kind of thinking of, I don't see this as like, I gotta get the newest, latest, best smartphone. Yeah. It's like you're, you're just, you're picking how many panels that you need because that's how much energy you need to generate. So it doesn't really matter if a new panel comes around five years from now. That's, that's so much better. Um, it sounds like you want those panels that you do buy to last as long as possible. Yeah, that's basically, it sounds like the consumer that would actually land in the opposite terrain from what you just described for yourself, the consumer who would land in the other side of that would be the major solar farms, utilities, where they're gonna be like, we've got a thousand panels out here. And a 10 to 15% efficiency boost is 10 to 15% more profit for us. So we're gonna replace the panels over time and keep going with the newest ones and increasing betting. But for you, you don't have the means as a private home, solar, electricity producer to profit in that same way. You can't be feeding that stuff back into the net, into the grid and, and getting that kind of benefit. That was actually a big question. Uh, my son and I recently visited Matt's home and my son was asking all sorts of questions about like, does Matt make money off of the energy his house produces? And I responded. Based on all the conversations we've had in the past, I remain, I retain about 10% of every conversation I have with Matt. So I responded when he asked that question with a no. Matt doesn't have the ability to sell that electricity to the grid. Matt is operating at net zero. So he's working from the place of, he makes as much as he uses, but he is not a moneymaking machine as a result. It does make money in the sense that there's money being credited on my account. Yes. But that is not money. And I told that. Yeah. Yeah. It's not the utility cutting me a check and sending me money. It's just like in the summertime I produce more energy than I need, so I suddenly have a $600 negative credit on my bill. And the winter when I'm pulling more energy from the grid, it's deducting it from that first before they start billing me directly. So it's like right in that regard, it is making me money, but it's not like. It's funny money. It's, it's not like, yeah, it's not, it's not like I see the cash in hand where utilities making money, not the cash in, in hand. Or you could go, go out and say like, in a year from now Yeah, I'll be able to afford a new car. Like, you're not, doesn't work out. This is not bankable cash. This is Right. Credit, debit, you know, columns going, it, it saves you money over time, but it's, it's not a tangible form of income. Yeah. Summons jumped into the comments to say, as much as I wish this were going to be used on all PVs, I suspect the added cost will preclude from use on earth space-based operations. On the other hand, where access for repair or replacement is expensive, dotdotdot. So this is, he's basically in the same vein of the conversation we just had about who your first customers of this technology might be. It might be in orbit around Earth before you drive by it in a solar farm. Yeah. And finally, this comment from Jim Yates jumped out to me. I just liked the details that he landed on at the end of it, Jim writes, I could see this being important for projects where the solar panels cannot be replaced or peak efficiency over an anticipated lifetime needs to remain constant. But otherwise, as you noted, normal solar panels have a lifespan of 25 years, and at this point are often cheaper than a sheet of plywood, literally cheaper in many cases than a sheet of three quarter premium plywood. I just added 2100 watts of brand new panels to my array for 540 bucks. Whoa. That's crazy. That's great. $540. If you had told teenage Sean that eventually there would be solar panels that people would be using on their homes, that would cost less than a thousand dollars. Less than $10,000. Like teenage Sean would've been like, people aren't gonna be going out and buying their own solar panels. How will that ever happen, Jim? Yes. Cheaper than wood. This is, that's pretty remarkable. This is what I, a weird time to be alive. Yeah. I love, this is why I love this technology. 'cause it's like obviously. I believe in climate change. I am concerned about the climate, but you could leave that outta the conversation completely when you're talking about this tech, this type of technology, it's like, I don't care if you believe in climate change or not. Would you like the cheapest form of energy generation possible? Would you like to be able to generate your own electricity for the first time in history? Like any person on the planet could be like, you know what? I don't like the utility. I'm gonna do it on my own. It's like, that didn't exist before. It's like this is now. Yeah. I love it. It's just the, the crazy potential of this. It's fantastic. And to, and this, this podcast, much to my chagrin, is not sponsored. We do not get sponsors on this podcast. Matt gets sponsors on his, on the main channel, but here I'm, I'm working for, I'm working for Soda folks. I will say this. I wanna talk for a moment about the sponsor of this episode of the one we're talking about right now. Mm-hmm. It's exactly what you just described, the accessibility of solar for anybody, including people like me who I don't own this home. Yeah. I don't have the ability to easily install anything on the building to create solar panel energy production. Yeah. But the company that was the sponsor of your, of this video was built around that kind of access, including if you have a terrace or space in a backyard, a effectively drape it over the railing or over a wall or a fence style panel so that you can start producing your own electricity. That's pretty remarkable. That, that as a, it's the equivalent of saying like, Hey, do you want a backup generator? Do you want to like have a little gas power generator in your backyard just in case something happens and you need emergency power. This feels like it's the equivalent of that. Just super easy. You got this thing back there, plug it in, except you're making your own gasoline, Sean. That's the, that's the part of it that's like, you're not having to go buy the gasoline. It's just like you have the machine and it's generating its own energy source. That's what is just so cool to me. Yeah, so I say all of that, knowing. This is not a sponsored moment. This is not an ad. This is me just saying. I watched an advertisement and I was just like, this is a crazy time to be alive. This is weird. It's, yeah. So listeners, what do you think? Do you think it's a weird time to be alive? Why? Let us know in the comments. Your comments might inspire an episode or a conversation here on this podcast, so jump into the comments and don't forget liking, subscribing, sharing with your friends. Those are all super easy ways for you to support the podcast. As is if you want to become a direct supporter, clicking the join button on YouTube or going to still TBD fm and click the join button there. Both of those ways allow you to throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the bruises, and then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of talking about, yes, what a strange time to be alive. Thank you so much, everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen. And we'll talk to you next time.