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Speaker 1: Hello, Maine and Greater New England. We're coming to see

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Speaker 1: you guys in Portland and we can't wait. We would

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Speaker 1: love to see you there. Yep. We'll be at the

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Speaker 1: State Theater on August. If you're interested. You can get

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Speaker 1: tickets and information at s y s K live dot com.

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Speaker 1: There's some lobster at us. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,

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Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.

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Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. The sun is shining,

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Speaker 1: our collars are popped, tongues of our shoes are hanging out,

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Speaker 1: and um, it smells really nice in here. That's right,

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Speaker 1: which must mean one thing. Chuck, It's time to talk

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Speaker 1: some stuff you should know? She is? Can I say that? Sure?

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Speaker 1: All right? Good? Well I just did, didn't you did? Uh? So? Uh?

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Speaker 1: We are at SLEE talking about solar power today, and

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Speaker 1: I'm a little psyched about this one because I was

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Speaker 1: putting this thing together over months. Dude, you would think

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Speaker 1: solar power is such a hot, sexy topic. You know

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Speaker 1: that there would be just reams and reams of just

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Speaker 1: stuff to research and there is, but it's all really

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Speaker 1: wonky and really technical, and there's a lot of stuff

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Speaker 1: that contradicts other stuff. And I get this feeling of

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Speaker 1: dread researching this, that the cheerleaders and champions of solar

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Speaker 1: power are losing their resolve to an extent. They'll still

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Speaker 1: sell you a solar panel, They'll still tell you a

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Speaker 1: solar is great, and I know that they truly believe that,

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Speaker 1: but I think that they are worried that it's it's

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Speaker 1: not taking off like they expected it too. But then

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Speaker 1: let me just caveat that with one other thing, and

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Speaker 1: then we'll get started and I'll be quiet for the

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Speaker 1: rest of the podcast. If you look at the numbers

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Speaker 1: and the figures, solar has quietly um made a name

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Speaker 1: for itself and established itself, at least in the United States,

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Speaker 1: to an astounding degree. So I'm not quite sure what

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Speaker 1: I'm picking up on when I get the sense that

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Speaker 1: they're worried, because if you look at it, it's actually

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Speaker 1: doing really, really well and growing all the time. Let's

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Speaker 1: discuss solar power. Yeah, power from the sun converted into electricity, right,

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Speaker 1: so you can say screw you power company, yeah, or

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Speaker 1: pay me power company. You could say, take this power

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Speaker 1: bill and shove it. So the sun. Uh, this is

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Speaker 1: pretty neat here at the beginning of this that you

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Speaker 1: put together here, Um, the sun ray. The Sun's rays

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Speaker 1: give off about a thousand wats of energy per square meter.

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Speaker 1: So if you pull the camera back a bit and

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Speaker 1: you look at Texas, let's say, a lot of sun

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Speaker 1: in Texas, a lot of land in Texas. There's a

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Speaker 1: lot of a lot of stuff from Texas. There really

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Speaker 1: is some stuff. No, that's true. I was gonna say

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Speaker 1: the good thing about Texas. You could completely cover it

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Speaker 1: with solar rays and no one but the people who

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Speaker 1: live in Texas would have a problem with it. Oh boy,

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Speaker 1: oh boy, oh gear Goo Google. All right, Um, So

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Speaker 1: if you look at a mass land mass that's as

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Speaker 1: big as Texas, they receive a little under seven hundred

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Speaker 1: terra wats over the course of one hour on a

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Speaker 1: on a at noon on a sunny day. Seven terra wats. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it sounds like a lot, but is it a lot?

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Speaker 1: Who knows? Who could possibly know? If you want to

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Speaker 1: compare that, you're being coy uh. In that same hour,

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Speaker 1: the total amount of human mage energy energy production on

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Speaker 1: planet Earth. And this is all energy production that you

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Speaker 1: could possibly dream of is seventeen point seven terra watts

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Speaker 1: compared to seven hundred terra wats. That's forty times less

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Speaker 1: than what the sun delivered to Texas and in just

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Speaker 1: that hour. Yeah, right, And the Union of Concerned Scientists

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Speaker 1: happen in group who I love. Um, they say that

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Speaker 1: eighteen days of sunshine that hits across the entire Earth

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Speaker 1: contains the same amount of energy stored in the entirety

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Speaker 1: of the planet's reserves of coal, oil and natural gas.

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Speaker 1: If you dug up and burned every bit of coal,

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Speaker 1: oil and natural gas, it would only produce as much

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Speaker 1: energy as eighteen days worth of global sunlight. That's astounding. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And these are you know, these are facts that have

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Speaker 1: fifty caveats beneath each of them, which we're going to

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Speaker 1: talk about. But it is a prime example, and I

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Speaker 1: think just a good way to kind of indicate just

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Speaker 1: how much energy potential energy there is coming from the

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Speaker 1: sun every day. Yeah, And just I mean to to

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Speaker 1: point out the obvious. The great thing about solar is

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Speaker 1: there is no greenhouse gas emissions when you use solar electricity.

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Speaker 1: It's just clean energy and it's free because it's from

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Speaker 1: the sun, that's right. And before you start typing, oh yeah,

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Speaker 1: but what about you got a lot to make. These

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Speaker 1: things were made it to look on and then before

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Speaker 1: you do that, we're going to talk about all that stuff.

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Speaker 1: But Josh very clearly said, once you have these things

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Speaker 1: set up, that's that's when the real benefit comes. Yes,

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Speaker 1: And if I hadn't said it, I was going to

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Speaker 1: eventually well no, you basically said it, like you know,

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Speaker 1: when they're working, when they're active, they're not using fossil fuels.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, Chuck. All right, so let's go back in

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Speaker 1: time a bit, because if you think solar power, you think, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: this stuff, you know, was invented in the nineteen seventies,

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Speaker 1: not so you have to go all the way back

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Speaker 1: to eighteen thirty nine, believe it or not. When a

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Speaker 1: French physicist name Alexandra Edmond, Uh, Josh says this back

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Speaker 1: quere I mean I practiced it a million times. Queriller,

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Speaker 1: I think be querillar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a tough word.

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Speaker 1: Yes it is. There's a couple of extra continants in that.

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Speaker 1: It just shouldn't be there, that's right. So, uh, this

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Speaker 1: dude He's the one that first demonstrated the photo voltaic effect,

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Speaker 1: which is basically the ability of a solar cell to

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Speaker 1: turn sun into electricity all the way back in right,

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Speaker 1: but no one knew exactly how this work. They just

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Speaker 1: knew that at work. He was burned at the stake

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Speaker 1: later on for his black magic. Right, So just about

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Speaker 1: forty about forty years later, there's a guy named Charles Fritz,

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Speaker 1: and he, in the eighteen eighties built the world's first

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Speaker 1: rooftop solar array. Coincidentally, just a year after Edison launched

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Speaker 1: the world's first coal fire power plant. UM. But this

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Speaker 1: early solar array was terribly inefficient. It didn't do very much.

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Speaker 1: It could bay basically power um. Jeez, I don't even

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Speaker 1: know what it could power a mouse trap? How about that,

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Speaker 1: which doesn't even need electricity. That's how little power that

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Speaker 1: this thing produced. Um. But it definitely demonstrated that it

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Speaker 1: was possible to generate an electrical current um from sunlight

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Speaker 1: in a way that it was a proof of concept,

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Speaker 1: basically saying just give it like ninety years and we'll

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Speaker 1: understand this better. And who was that that was? Fritz? Ye,

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Speaker 1: Fritz was a good guy, but he was no, Einstein, Uh, Einstein.

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Speaker 1: It would take Einstein, that is, to really explain how

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Speaker 1: this all worked in nineteen o five, because he had

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Speaker 1: a knack for doing that. I'm not sure if people

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Speaker 1: realize that he was a good explainer, maybe the original explainer.

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Speaker 1: Well he would put it in terms that you could

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Speaker 1: really understand, like like consider the sandwich. Imagine the sandwich

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Speaker 1: is the sun, and then it just go from there

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Speaker 1: and you'd be like, you understand what he's saying. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And if you think, uh, Einstein, oh yeah, he won

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Speaker 1: a bunch of Nobel Prizes for relativity. Not so. He

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Speaker 1: won the Nobel Prize in Physics for explaining the photo

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Speaker 1: electric effect. He didn't win for relativity. No, I didn't

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Speaker 1: know that. Holy cow, what is unless I'm wrong? And

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Speaker 1: if i am, I'm gonna have a lot of egg

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Speaker 1: on my face. That's all right, Well we'll cook it

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Speaker 1: off with some good old solar electricity. Gross. It is gross,

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Speaker 1: but also so is the idea of cooked egg in

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Speaker 1: your beard. So Bell Labs in nineteen fifty four, if

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Speaker 1: you want to talk about the modern PV cell, that

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Speaker 1: was the and uh thanks to the US government really

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Speaker 1: in the US military, they funded a lot of this

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Speaker 1: early research, because if you've ever looked at a picture

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Speaker 1: of sky Lab or any of our great satellites, you'll

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Speaker 1: notice that they all have these big solar wings. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they're solar powered. And it was because of US government

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Speaker 1: research in the fifties that we were able to develop those.

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Speaker 1: I think they launched the first solar powered satellite in

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, no. Fifty eight, and then just six

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Speaker 1: years later they launched the first solar powered satellite whose

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Speaker 1: solar panels could track the Sun, which is still a

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Speaker 1: pretty whiz bang thing to have for your solar array.

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Speaker 1: And this is nine sixty four. So the US government

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Speaker 1: invested in the earliest research and everything was going along

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Speaker 1: really smoothly. Um. But one of the things that's always

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Speaker 1: been a problem for solar is oil in natural gas

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Speaker 1: and coal are just so cheap, and our infrastructure is

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Speaker 1: set up to burn those things and get electricity for them.

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Speaker 1: So solar has always been an upstart. But at one

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Speaker 1: point in nineteen seventy three, oil was not very cheap

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Speaker 1: all of a sudden because of the OPEC embargo that

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Speaker 1: created the energy crisis that made it really un cheap.

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Speaker 1: So much so that the United States looked around and said,

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Speaker 1: we need to find other sources of energy, and they

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Speaker 1: really looked really hard at solar and it actually gave

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Speaker 1: solar technology a big old boost. Yeah, and that boost

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Speaker 1: came by way of offering tax credits for the first

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Speaker 1: time in the United States for businesses and residents. Said hey,

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Speaker 1: if you want to put in solar power, and they

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Speaker 1: still do this today, we'll give you some tax credits.

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Speaker 1: It will make a lot cheaper for you. Um. There

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Speaker 1: has been I guess we could call it the the

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Speaker 1: solar Battle at the White House since nineteen seventy nine.

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Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter had very famously had solar panels installed on

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Speaker 1: the roof of the White House, uh to heat water

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Speaker 1: for for them and for the pools and for the

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Speaker 1: kitchen and stuff like that. And Uh, Reagan had them

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Speaker 1: taken down in eighties six. So there are a couple

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Speaker 1: of stories about how this went down. Um. The cynic

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Speaker 1: will say Reagan as a statement had them taken down

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Speaker 1: even though they were working fine, because he was all

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Speaker 1: for the fossil fuel industry and it was a very

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Speaker 1: symbolic gesture. Other people will say that's not what happened.

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Speaker 1: At all. The roof needed repair that the solar panels

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Speaker 1: were on, and they took down the solar panels to

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Speaker 1: repair the roof, and then the White House officially says

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Speaker 1: they did not put them back because it would be

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Speaker 1: very unwise based on cost. Is a direct quote. Uh

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Speaker 1: so that's you know, that's the party line right now.

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Speaker 1: I've never heard that one. That sounds like a new

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Speaker 1: gingrich you are And if you ask me, well, that's

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Speaker 1: a direct quote. Um, George W. Bush put uh solar

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Speaker 1: power back into the White House. Say what what? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, he put solar for the

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Speaker 1: water heaters for the White House pool and then put

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Speaker 1: solar panels on top of the roof of the grounds

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Speaker 1: maintenance building to how out there. He did not have

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Speaker 1: them on top of the actual White House, but he

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Speaker 1: had solar solar power installed at various places around the

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Speaker 1: White House. This was w or h W. This is

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Speaker 1: w okay, Wow, that's really surprising. Yeah. Um. Carter's for

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Speaker 1: his part, one of his he has two on display.

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Speaker 1: One of them is at the Smithsonian and one of

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Speaker 1: them is right here in Atlanta at the Carter Center.

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Speaker 1: You can go look at one of those solar panels.

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Speaker 1: There's also like a Museum of Science in China that

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Speaker 1: got their hands on one. It's on display in China too.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, which makes sense because after after the U. S.

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Speaker 1: Government kind of turned its back on solar, China came

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Speaker 1: along and said, oh, we'll take that ball and ran

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Speaker 1: with it. Sure, going back to Reagan though he didn't.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to let him up too easy with this.

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Speaker 1: Um the fact that they just said it was unwise

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Speaker 1: based on costs because he gutted the Department of Energies

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Speaker 1: Renewable Energy research and Development budgets, like totally gutted him,

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Speaker 1: and he eliminated the tax breaks for wind and solar. Um.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure for how long, but for a million years,

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Speaker 1: I would guess now, because they're back. Uh. And it

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Speaker 1: was Obama who came back and very publicly installed solar

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Speaker 1: panels back on the roof of the White House. And

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Speaker 1: of course the first thing I thought was that that

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Speaker 1: Trump probably went in there and smashed him with a

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Speaker 1: sledgehammer on his first day in office. But apparently they're

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Speaker 1: still there. They're still there, huh, still there and still working.

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Speaker 1: He didn't take them down. Wow, we so one of

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Speaker 1: the other things that UM the government did to help

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Speaker 1: solar along during the Carter era was to to offer

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Speaker 1: tax breaks, like you were saying, but because of the

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Speaker 1: really really high cost of installing a solar electric system, UM,

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Speaker 1: it was basically viewed as a sweetheart deal, tax break

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Speaker 1: for the rich. That's how the first solar tax credits

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Speaker 1: were viewed because solar was so expensive, so they were

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Speaker 1: a little bit before their time. But over the course

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Speaker 1: of those ensuing years from the early eighties on Moor

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Speaker 1: to today, a UM, because we've had breakthroughs and technology

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Speaker 1: UM of manufacturing, of creating new kinds of semiconductors, of

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Speaker 1: making traditional kinds more cheaply, the price of solar has

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Speaker 1: dropped eight percent in the past decade. Yeah, I mean

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Speaker 1: it's really to the point now where it's I mean

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Speaker 1: I looked at some of the prices and I was like,

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Speaker 1: you know what, that's that's now I think fairly affordable

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Speaker 1: for for most kind of middle class Americans if they

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Speaker 1: want to put in solar power, because you know, eventually

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Speaker 1: it's going to pay for itself. That's the whole the

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Speaker 1: whole idea. Either you're either you're trying to pay this,

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Speaker 1: you know, get cheaper bills and have it pay for

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Speaker 1: itself over the years, which is going to happen regardless,

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Speaker 1: or you're someone with some money that just wants to, um,

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Speaker 1: do the right thing by the environment and get off

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Speaker 1: the grid as much as possible. Yeah, it's just that

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Speaker 1: upfront cost, not the cost over the life of the setup.

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Speaker 1: It's the upfront cost. But there are things like you

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Speaker 1: can there UM like energy saver, renewable energy, mortgages, home

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Speaker 1: loans basically you can take out they have UM really

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Speaker 1: special good financing and rates and stuff like that. Um,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of things you can do that we'll

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Speaker 1: talk about to get around the upfront cost. But you

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Speaker 1: you hit the nail on the head, and it's really

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Speaker 1: worth saying again you can expect your solar um electrical

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Speaker 1: home system to pay for itself over the lifetime of

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Speaker 1: the setup. Yeah, and we'll talk more about price later,

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Speaker 1: but just poking around like it's sort of an average

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Speaker 1: US household, you can plunk down about fifteen grand to

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Speaker 1: cover your electricity needs, which and that's I think after

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Speaker 1: the text credit if I'm not mistaken right, And again,

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Speaker 1: you know, there are so many factors where you live,

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Speaker 1: how much energy use, how big your house is, the

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Speaker 1: weather where you are. So this is a big, big

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Speaker 1: broad statement. But if you're just looking for a general range,

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Speaker 1: it's not like it costs fifty or sixty dollars anymore

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Speaker 1: to do this, right, So you want to take a

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Speaker 1: you want to take a break and then come back

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Speaker 1: and talk about what actually is going on in those

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Speaker 1: solar cells. Let's do it, Chuck, okay, dude. So um,

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Speaker 1: there are three ways as far as humans are aware

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Speaker 1: of right now, that you can get energy from the sun.

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Speaker 1: You can get it by converting it into electricity what

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about. Basically, you can turn it into

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Speaker 1: chemical energy, which is it's far out though, it's like

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Speaker 1: storing energy in the bonds of molecules, like through artificial photosynthesis.

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Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. And then you can also convert it

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Speaker 1: into heat. But when you're talking about solar energy, most

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Speaker 1: people think of these solar into electricity, which is called

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Speaker 1: photovoltaic um energy, and that's basically what we're going to

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Speaker 1: be talking about. Yeah, Like when you drive to the

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Speaker 1: neighborhood and you see those shiny panels on a roof

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Speaker 1: and think, my god, those are ugly. That's true, man,

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Speaker 1: it's true. We'll get to that too. Uh So, that's

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Speaker 1: what we're talking about. These photo voltaic cells. They are

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Speaker 1: made up of semiconductors, materials called semiconductors. And these days,

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Speaker 1: and you know, we're talking a second about how this

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Speaker 1: might be changing in the future, but about all these

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Speaker 1: solar cells these days are using silicon as the semiconductor. Right.

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Speaker 1: Silicon is a crystal, which means that it has a

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Speaker 1: really tight atomic composition. Right, it's not very it's extraordinarily

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Speaker 1: stable um, which is kind of a thing because you

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Speaker 1: want a somewhat unstable um arrangement of atoms or else

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Speaker 1: you won't get this electricity to work. But no, you can't.

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Speaker 1: But that's exactly right. The flow of electricity basically but

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Speaker 1: with um. The reason why they use silicon is because

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Speaker 1: it is a semiconductor, which means that it gives you

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Speaker 1: a large measure of control over where that electricity flows

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Speaker 1: and how it flows. So rather than just using pure silicon,

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Speaker 1: which um will will allow you to direct the control

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Speaker 1: of electricity but won't produce any electricity, they actually dope

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Speaker 1: it with other materials to produce two different types of

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Speaker 1: silicon film. UM, ND type and P type. That's right. So, uh,

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Speaker 1: for the ND type, which is stands for negative, they're

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Speaker 1: gonna dope it. And I love that word in this

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Speaker 1: case with phosphorus that has five electrons, so it's gonna

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Speaker 1: bind to the silicon that has four electrons, and so

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Speaker 1: that leaves you I can even do this kind of

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Speaker 1: simple math with one free one extra electron leftover, just

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Speaker 1: dangling out there like it's wearing shorts that are way

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Speaker 1: too short. Yeah, it's looking for a place to go. Basically. Um,

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Speaker 1: the way I sort of saw this was like a

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Speaker 1: couple of apartments next to each other. One has an

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Speaker 1: empty room and one has an extra roommate. Okay, that's

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Speaker 1: a great one. So the other type is this P type,

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Speaker 1: the positive it's doped with boron has three electrons, and

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Speaker 1: so this is the other apartment. This is the one

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Speaker 1: it's gonna bind with silicon, and it leaves that unused

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Speaker 1: bond open. So that's where you have your extra space

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Speaker 1: where the electron can go. Right. So when you take

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Speaker 1: ND type silicon film and P type silicon film and

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Speaker 1: you put them up against one another, UM, you have

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Speaker 1: a situation where that extra electron wants to flow to

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Speaker 1: the other side and fill the unused bond, because again,

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Speaker 1: the universe is always moving towards homeostasis. Right. Yeah, that

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Speaker 1: roommates like, hey, you've got an next room, Can I

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Speaker 1: come crash in there? Yeah, And they say, wait, wait,

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Speaker 1: we need somebody to get you off of the couch.

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Speaker 1: And in this case, that somebody is sunlight, because sunlight

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Speaker 1: is made up of photons, which are energy carriers of

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Speaker 1: the electromagnetic spectrum. And when they hit this doped silicon,

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Speaker 1: they come bursting into the room and they kick that

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Speaker 1: that lazy electron into the other apartment where there's an

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Speaker 1: open bedroom and everything is filled very nicely. That's right.

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Speaker 1: So this electron flow, these electrons moving around and flowing

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Speaker 1: in this single direction. I think we said that yet

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Speaker 1: it only flows in one direction. Electricity does well, it

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Speaker 1: does in this one in this case. Yeah, that's the basis.

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Speaker 1: This electron flow is the basis of electricity. And what

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Speaker 1: they do is they put these metal contacts on the

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Speaker 1: top and the bottom of the cell and then you

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Speaker 1: can direct that electron flow out of the cell to

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Speaker 1: be used as electricity in your home. Yeah, that's that's

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Speaker 1: the soul or cell and in a nutshell. And the

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Speaker 1: solar cell is the basic unit of the of what

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Speaker 1: you think of when you think of like a solar

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Speaker 1: panel or whatever, it's that one little square and that

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Speaker 1: square is connected to other squares um and and they

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Speaker 1: they form what's called a module. And when you put

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Speaker 1: like um a nice little uh frame around it and

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Speaker 1: put it on a stand or whatever, you have yourself

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Speaker 1: a solar panel. When you have a bunch of solar

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Speaker 1: panels together in a group, all working together, that's a

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Speaker 1: solar array. So technically, when you point at someone's roof

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Speaker 1: and you say, look at that solar panel, you're saying,

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Speaker 1: look at that solar array. And now you can correct

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Speaker 1: that person from the back seat and they'll make you

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Speaker 1: get out of the car. People say that, look at

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Speaker 1: that solar array, universe. I would think people would more say,

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Speaker 1: look at those solar panels. Well, then that would make sense.

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Speaker 1: I had just set it up so it didn't make

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Speaker 1: any sense, so someone would swoop in incorrect. So the

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Speaker 1: person who knows what it's really called is around with

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Speaker 1: complete morons. We say things like look at that solar panel.

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Speaker 1: When they see a group of solar panels. All right, now,

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Speaker 1: I got you we're talking about right, all right, So

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Speaker 1: it's it's it sounds simple, and it is kind of simple,

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Speaker 1: and it's um complexity that makes no sense at all.

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Speaker 1: But it's a little more complicated because, like we said,

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Speaker 1: electricity in this case is only flowing in one direction,

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Speaker 1: which means it creates a direct current. And that's a

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Speaker 1: problem because uh we you know, if you we talked

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Speaker 1: about in the Bone Wars episode about the the uh

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Speaker 1: what they called not the power of Wars, the current

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Speaker 1: current wars, the War of current. That's right, d C

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Speaker 1: did not win. Um, So we have to convert that

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Speaker 1: d C current to a C current. So what the

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Speaker 1: solar panels need is something called an inverter. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: the inverter is basically like the brains of the whole

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Speaker 1: set up. And there used to be a big problem

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Speaker 1: with inverters. Um. They were very clunky, and you would

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Speaker 1: basically have one inverter for an entire solar array, and um,

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Speaker 1: the solar inverter would would kind of modulate the amount

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Speaker 1: of electricity that was going through it out to the

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Speaker 1: house or the circuit panel, and it would base whatever

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Speaker 1: it was doing on whatever the lowest common denominator of

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Speaker 1: the whole array was giving it right. So if you

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Speaker 1: had one dirty solar cell, or there was a cloud

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Speaker 1: going over just one solar panel out of like twenty,

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Speaker 1: the inverter was basically delivering electricity based on that one

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Speaker 1: that one cloudy panel, or that one dirty cell. That's

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Speaker 1: not the case anymore, It really wasn't. The solar industry

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Speaker 1: wised up and they said, we can do better than this,

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Speaker 1: and they came up with what are called micro inverters.

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Speaker 1: And now a micro inverter is responsible for um either

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Speaker 1: one panel or just a single cell, and so that

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Speaker 1: one cell could could be a dirty or cloudy at

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Speaker 1: any given point, but it's not going to drag down

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Speaker 1: the whole thing because there's all these other inverters that

404
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Speaker 1: are are running the show on their own too. How

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Speaker 1: can you got to clean these things? Did you see that?

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Speaker 1: I didn't, but I did see that they were virtually

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Speaker 1: maintenance free? Oh really, yeah, that's what I say. Um,

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Speaker 1: all right, so let's talk about powering a house. Uh

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Speaker 1: And just like four years ago, two thousand fifteen, and

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Speaker 1: these are pretty good numbers, eight hundred thousand houses and

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Speaker 1: businesses in the United States had solar panels. And that's

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Speaker 1: not to say they were um dependent on them, but

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Speaker 1: they were at least doing some of the work right,

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Speaker 1: which is not bad. Um. And like you said, once,

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Speaker 1: once it's up and running, not much maintenance going on,

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Speaker 1: and you're looking at probably and the number they often

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Speaker 1: throw out is just you know, for twenty years, you

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Speaker 1: can expect this thing to work like a charm. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: twenty years is the low end. I saw the averages

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Speaker 1: about twenty five years. When you buy a solar setup

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Speaker 1: that you can just put it up there and be like, oh, um,

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Speaker 1: this is great. I don't even need to think about

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Speaker 1: this anymore. UM. But if you do want to invest

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Speaker 1: in this, if you're like, okay, I can swing this,

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Speaker 1: I want to contribute, I'm going to go solar. There

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Speaker 1: are some steps you want to take UM to kind

427
00:25:11,320 --> 00:25:14,040
Speaker 1: of wisen yourself up so that when you deal with

428
00:25:14,080 --> 00:25:16,439
Speaker 1: the installer you'll know what you're talking about and when

429
00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:17,840
Speaker 1: the first thing you want to do is to do

430
00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:21,399
Speaker 1: an energy audit on your energy consumption, which is basically

431
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:24,159
Speaker 1: figuring out how much electricity you use in your house.

432
00:25:24,720 --> 00:25:27,880
Speaker 1: UM at any given time, probably want to figure out

433
00:25:27,880 --> 00:25:31,000
Speaker 1: what your peak is and then just kind of plan

434
00:25:31,160 --> 00:25:34,560
Speaker 1: for for that. Um. See, what I don't get is

435
00:25:34,600 --> 00:25:36,200
Speaker 1: like you can look at your power bill and tell

436
00:25:36,200 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 1: that you need to do it a separate audit outside

437
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:41,159
Speaker 1: of that. Well, the reason why it's good to do

438
00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 1: a separate audit outside of that is you can identify

439
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:48,000
Speaker 1: areas where you can improve things. It's it's kind of like, no,

440
00:25:48,119 --> 00:25:49,600
Speaker 1: you don't have to do it, but you could do

441
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:51,840
Speaker 1: an energy audit, and when you do, you can be like, oh,

442
00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:54,280
Speaker 1: I think if I added insulation to the attic, it

443
00:25:54,280 --> 00:26:01,000
Speaker 1: would come consumption by its right. Yeah. Yeah, It's kind

444
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:04,000
Speaker 1: of like, um, if if taking on the project of

445
00:26:04,040 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 1: getting solar installed on your home wasn't a big enough

446
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:10,200
Speaker 1: headache for you, add this to it, you know what

447
00:26:10,240 --> 00:26:12,320
Speaker 1: I'm saying. But it's a good it will definitely you

448
00:26:12,359 --> 00:26:15,400
Speaker 1: will find some places where you can cut your energy consumption.

449
00:26:15,440 --> 00:26:17,879
Speaker 1: That's the benefit of an energy audit. And this is

450
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:20,480
Speaker 1: just happens to be a good time to do it. Yeah.

451
00:26:20,520 --> 00:26:22,920
Speaker 1: And you know the other thing you have to decide

452
00:26:22,960 --> 00:26:25,159
Speaker 1: as you're pricing this out, and you can call a

453
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:28,320
Speaker 1: company they will they will come out these days and

454
00:26:28,640 --> 00:26:31,959
Speaker 1: basically tell you what you need. Um, you know if

455
00:26:31,960 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 1: you get a good, highly recommended company, and apparently some

456
00:26:35,080 --> 00:26:37,800
Speaker 1: of the smaller companies are much more highly recommended than

457
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:41,080
Speaker 1: the larger companies from what I read online. But they

458
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:44,320
Speaker 1: will come out and say the question they're gonna say is, uh,

459
00:26:44,359 --> 00:26:46,439
Speaker 1: and this is really the most important thing for you

460
00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:49,840
Speaker 1: to decide is how much of what percentage of of

461
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:52,520
Speaker 1: your household energy do you want to come from solar?

462
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:56,760
Speaker 1: And if you're like they'll they'll say, okay, well here's

463
00:26:56,760 --> 00:26:58,840
Speaker 1: what you need. If you say, you know what you know,

464
00:26:58,840 --> 00:27:00,560
Speaker 1: if I can cover I don't have much roof space,

465
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:05,479
Speaker 1: I'm happy with covering my UM power usage, then they'll say,

466
00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:07,480
Speaker 1: all right, well, then let's work within your system. Or

467
00:27:07,520 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 1: you may just be you may not have a choice

468
00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:12,399
Speaker 1: unless you uh, you know, it all depends on your

469
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:14,000
Speaker 1: roof and the way it's sloped and the way it's

470
00:27:14,000 --> 00:27:17,320
Speaker 1: faced and all that stuff. Right. Um, yeah, there's a

471
00:27:17,359 --> 00:27:20,879
Speaker 1: lot of considerations. UM. And again you're you're the person

472
00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:22,600
Speaker 1: you hire to do this is going to be able

473
00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:24,760
Speaker 1: to provide you with all this information and ask all

474
00:27:24,760 --> 00:27:27,040
Speaker 1: the right questions. But if you want to know what

475
00:27:27,119 --> 00:27:30,440
Speaker 1: you're talking about going into it, um, you can find

476
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:33,680
Speaker 1: out kind of about how much electricity you could expect

477
00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:37,520
Speaker 1: a solar array on your roof to produce um down

478
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:40,159
Speaker 1: to your actual house. Like there's all sorts of solar

479
00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 1: potential maps online yea, and calculators. It's really They make

480
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:46,080
Speaker 1: it kind of really easy on you these days. It's easy.

481
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:49,760
Speaker 1: And let's just be honest, Chuck. It's fun too because

482
00:27:49,800 --> 00:27:52,280
Speaker 1: it'll show you like how much money you will actually

483
00:27:52,520 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 1: not only like how much you'll save over the course

484
00:27:56,800 --> 00:27:59,639
Speaker 1: of the lifetime of the solar array. And you'll have

485
00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:01,640
Speaker 1: a do you good idea of how fast the thing

486
00:28:01,640 --> 00:28:04,680
Speaker 1: will pay for itself. It's it's pretty cool to do um.

487
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:07,119
Speaker 1: But you'll have an idea of, uh, this thing is

488
00:28:07,160 --> 00:28:08,959
Speaker 1: gonna pay for itself in eight years, or this thing

489
00:28:09,040 --> 00:28:11,000
Speaker 1: is gonna pay for itself in twenty five years, and

490
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:13,520
Speaker 1: that will largely depend on where you live in the country.

491
00:28:13,760 --> 00:28:17,800
Speaker 1: But everything I saw from everywhere, from Union of Concerned

492
00:28:17,800 --> 00:28:21,159
Speaker 1: Scientists to Energy dot Gov is that everywhere in the

493
00:28:21,280 --> 00:28:25,920
Speaker 1: United States you can expect your solar array to pay

494
00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:29,120
Speaker 1: for itself eventually over the life of its over its

495
00:28:29,119 --> 00:28:31,400
Speaker 1: own life. It might take a little longer in Seattle

496
00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:34,719
Speaker 1: than in Phoenix, right, but you know, that's how things go.

497
00:28:34,880 --> 00:28:37,680
Speaker 1: You got better music in Seattle and better food, well

498
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 1: maybe the food to watch you got the You got

499
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: the music though for sure. Sorry Phoenix, we we love you.

500
00:28:46,000 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 1: Yeah sorry uh, last of the meat puppets. So I

501
00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:52,880
Speaker 1: talked about the angle of these panels and the angle

502
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:56,600
Speaker 1: of your roof. Um, it's called the angle of inclination.

503
00:28:56,720 --> 00:28:58,800
Speaker 1: Is what is how you have to set these If

504
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 1: you have all all the money in the world and

505
00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:04,560
Speaker 1: in nowhere to spend it, you can actually get systems

506
00:29:04,600 --> 00:29:08,120
Speaker 1: that have motors that will move and follow these panels,

507
00:29:08,120 --> 00:29:12,320
Speaker 1: will follow the sun across the sky, stay in perfect uh,

508
00:29:12,640 --> 00:29:16,640
Speaker 1: stay at the perfect angle of inclination. That is super expensive, though,

509
00:29:17,360 --> 00:29:19,239
Speaker 1: it is. That's the technology I was talking about from

510
00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:23,040
Speaker 1: that they had figured out for saddle. Yeah it is,

511
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:26,200
Speaker 1: but yeah, it is still kind of expensive. Um. What

512
00:29:26,240 --> 00:29:29,440
Speaker 1: I've seen though, is rather than invest in figuring out

513
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:32,480
Speaker 1: how to make those kinds of setups cheaper, they figured

514
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:36,120
Speaker 1: out how to catch more diffuse sunlight, that kind that

515
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:39,400
Speaker 1: gets scattered by clouds. That makes sense on a solar panel,

516
00:29:39,520 --> 00:29:42,720
Speaker 1: so you don't necessarily have to have it. Um, the

517
00:29:42,880 --> 00:29:46,240
Speaker 1: kind that tracks the sunlight, and you can still get

518
00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 1: as much electricity as you're gonna need to power your

519
00:29:48,880 --> 00:29:51,520
Speaker 1: house basically no matter where you are in the country,

520
00:29:51,800 --> 00:29:54,600
Speaker 1: just from the solar panels that they make these days. Yeah,

521
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:58,120
Speaker 1: so uh ideally, um, your array is going to be

522
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:02,280
Speaker 1: pointing true south. That's not to say if your roof

523
00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:03,880
Speaker 1: is set up in such a way that it doesn't

524
00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 1: point to south, you can't have solar because like you said,

525
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:09,240
Speaker 1: they've come a long long way over the years with

526
00:30:09,240 --> 00:30:11,760
Speaker 1: how they can collect the sunlight. But if you're facing

527
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:14,800
Speaker 1: true south and you're at a good angle that's as

528
00:30:14,800 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 1: close to the area that you're in as close to

529
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:19,400
Speaker 1: the latitude as possible, you don't have a lot of

530
00:30:19,400 --> 00:30:21,960
Speaker 1: trees around and no big buildings, then you're a really

531
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:25,040
Speaker 1: good candidate to provide energy for your house. We should

532
00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:27,400
Speaker 1: say also, that's if you're in the northern hemisphere. We

533
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:30,360
Speaker 1: have listeners in the southern that's true. So I would

534
00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:32,280
Speaker 1: say if you're in Australia, you would want it to

535
00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:35,720
Speaker 1: face true North. But everybody knows that the sun is

536
00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 1: so ridiculously hot in Australia that you don't even need

537
00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:42,840
Speaker 1: solar panels. It just powers everything, just blazing down on everyone.

538
00:30:42,920 --> 00:30:46,400
Speaker 1: You can bury your solar panels underground in Australia, that's

539
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:48,880
Speaker 1: still work better than here. It's like you can scrape

540
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:54,479
Speaker 1: me son. So um. The other thing is weather, Like

541
00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:58,280
Speaker 1: it's never weather is never predictable. But what you're gonna

542
00:30:58,280 --> 00:31:01,200
Speaker 1: do is look at the data in your area, look

543
00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 1: at average monthly sunlight and stuff like that, take into

544
00:31:04,440 --> 00:31:07,240
Speaker 1: account rainfall, and in the end you want to design

545
00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:10,480
Speaker 1: for because you want power all the time. If you're

546
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:14,720
Speaker 1: going you want to design for your worst month. Um

547
00:31:14,960 --> 00:31:17,240
Speaker 1: sort of like now, not really, I was about to say,

548
00:31:17,360 --> 00:31:20,240
Speaker 1: just like those initial inverters, you're only as strong as

549
00:31:20,280 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 1: your weakest member. But you want to take into account.

550
00:31:23,600 --> 00:31:26,920
Speaker 1: Let's like, let's say it rains every single day in

551
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:31,000
Speaker 1: a month, you lose your job, dog dies, just absolute

552
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: worst month, right, So then they might say, all right,

553
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:38,360
Speaker 1: throw on an extra panel for your dog, right and

554
00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 1: you'll be just fine. So um, if you're all hyped

555
00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:45,600
Speaker 1: up about this, there's we just kind of opened the

556
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:48,040
Speaker 1: can of worms. There's a lot more to take into account.

557
00:31:48,080 --> 00:31:51,560
Speaker 1: But again, just hire somebody reputable, do your research, and

558
00:31:51,600 --> 00:31:53,480
Speaker 1: they should be able to guide you through process a

559
00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:56,000
Speaker 1: lot more than we can. But I do strongly advise

560
00:31:56,080 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: going on and figuring out your like you need to

561
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:02,400
Speaker 1: know what you need to know kind of thing. Does

562
00:32:02,440 --> 00:32:05,040
Speaker 1: that make sense? Yeah, for sure. Um. And you know

563
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: earlier you mentioned that these things were ugly and for

564
00:32:08,360 --> 00:32:11,680
Speaker 1: a long time they were the bane of existence of

565
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:16,000
Speaker 1: a lot of people in certain neighborhoods. Some homeowners associations

566
00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:19,400
Speaker 1: still won't allow them. Um, but they've gotten better looking

567
00:32:19,400 --> 00:32:24,520
Speaker 1: over time. They've gotten um, closer to the roof line, um,

568
00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:27,880
Speaker 1: a little bit more attractive. And I think, in my

569
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:32,280
Speaker 1: opinion this is just me speculating. Just the perception is changed.

570
00:32:32,480 --> 00:32:35,600
Speaker 1: And now when you see them, you don't think, oh

571
00:32:35,600 --> 00:32:37,360
Speaker 1: my gosh, I'll get an ugly thing on the roof.

572
00:32:37,360 --> 00:32:40,840
Speaker 1: You think, well, you know, those are solar panels and

573
00:32:40,880 --> 00:32:43,680
Speaker 1: it might not blend in perfectly with the roof, but there,

574
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:46,760
Speaker 1: you know, there's a big benefit as well. You don't

575
00:32:46,800 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 1: even think like hippies live there anymore. Normal people live

576
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:55,800
Speaker 1: there normal So Um, there's also solar roof tiles that

577
00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 1: are really starting to come along with those versions. Yeah,

578
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:04,000
Speaker 1: they're nuts, how they're also they're super durable, they're very pretty. Um.

579
00:33:04,160 --> 00:33:08,600
Speaker 1: I don't own any because they're extremely expensive, but they

580
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:11,280
Speaker 1: if they can get the cost down to anything approaching

581
00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 1: like a normal sized roof. It's just like game over man.

582
00:33:15,440 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 1: That's it. It's exactly like the the the each one

583
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:22,960
Speaker 1: of these tiles is like a solar cell or a

584
00:33:23,040 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 1: solar panel, and it's a whole roof's worth of them.

585
00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:29,960
Speaker 1: They're super durable, but they also cost about five to

586
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:33,160
Speaker 1: ten times the amount of a normal roof these days,

587
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 1: which is just you're you're never gonna pay for it's

588
00:33:36,360 --> 00:33:38,400
Speaker 1: never gonna pay for itself. Yeah. I mean, if you're

589
00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 1: spending I don't know, twelve to fifteen grand on a

590
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:43,520
Speaker 1: roof and you have to spend up to a hundred

591
00:33:43,520 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand for that roof to be solar, that's

592
00:33:45,280 --> 00:33:48,520
Speaker 1: a lot of dought. I saw like two hundred in

593
00:33:48,520 --> 00:33:50,760
Speaker 1: one case, but yeah, somewhere between a hundred and two

594
00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 1: hundred for a new roof. Yeah. But the people that

595
00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:55,959
Speaker 1: are doing this are you know, the very well healed

596
00:33:55,960 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 1: who want to be able to brag about their solar

597
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:01,200
Speaker 1: roof quite frankly. Yeah. And I mean if they're doing

598
00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:04,320
Speaker 1: that and they're they're you know, generating solar for their house,

599
00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:07,800
Speaker 1: more power to them. That's fine. I mean, it's just

600
00:34:08,400 --> 00:34:11,879
Speaker 1: I Tesla needs to get that that price down quite

601
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:16,120
Speaker 1: a bit. Come on, Tesla. So we need to talk

602
00:34:16,160 --> 00:34:18,839
Speaker 1: a little bit about efficiency. So, um, you know, how

603
00:34:18,880 --> 00:34:22,359
Speaker 1: much of the Sun's energy we can convert into electricity?

604
00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:25,800
Speaker 1: Is that efficiency? And way back when they first started

605
00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 1: this stuff in the nineteenth century, it was one not

606
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:30,640
Speaker 1: even one percent, So it was mainly just like, hey,

607
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:32,879
Speaker 1: look what we can do now a little bit. Um.

608
00:34:32,960 --> 00:34:40,879
Speaker 1: Now it's at not true, it's about now. Um, it's

609
00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:42,440
Speaker 1: not as much as I would have thought when I

610
00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:46,480
Speaker 1: started uh doing this research. And you can't ever get

611
00:34:46,480 --> 00:34:48,719
Speaker 1: to a pent I think they said at the very

612
00:34:48,760 --> 00:34:51,560
Speaker 1: max these days because of energy loss and conversion and

613
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:54,400
Speaker 1: stuff that the tip top upper limits about eight seven

614
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:58,320
Speaker 1: percent that we could ever get. That's like the physical

615
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 1: limit for conversion. I mean it's the sun. It's not

616
00:35:02,200 --> 00:35:07,120
Speaker 1: like you know, the sunlight. You don't use fills up landfills,

617
00:35:08,120 --> 00:35:11,800
Speaker 1: you know for sure for sure, um, But the there

618
00:35:11,920 --> 00:35:16,600
Speaker 1: is a lot of room for improvement between that current

619
00:35:15,320 --> 00:35:19,840
Speaker 1: and right um, and we're actually starting to make those

620
00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:24,080
Speaker 1: those kind of gains. Um. One of the ways to

621
00:35:24,120 --> 00:35:27,080
Speaker 1: do it is to make solar panels cheaper. So even

622
00:35:27,120 --> 00:35:32,000
Speaker 1: if they are just at efficiency if the process of

623
00:35:32,040 --> 00:35:34,680
Speaker 1: making them is cheaper, you can put more solar panels

624
00:35:34,719 --> 00:35:36,719
Speaker 1: up and the average person can afford it. That's one

625
00:35:36,719 --> 00:35:38,840
Speaker 1: way to go. A better way to go is to

626
00:35:38,920 --> 00:35:43,400
Speaker 1: focus on making those materials as ridiculously efficient as possible.

627
00:35:43,920 --> 00:35:48,280
Speaker 1: And what they found a promising new material called parov skite.

628
00:35:48,520 --> 00:35:50,880
Speaker 1: I think that's how you say it. It's kind of

629
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:53,480
Speaker 1: a clunky word. It really is um and I think

630
00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:57,080
Speaker 1: it was discovered by Russians or Soviets back in the day.

631
00:35:57,239 --> 00:36:00,439
Speaker 1: It really does um. But the one of things about

632
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:04,440
Speaker 1: parov skite, this mineral, is that it is really really

633
00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:07,360
Speaker 1: efficient when it comes to the blue end of the spectrum,

634
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:12,959
Speaker 1: the blue to ultraviolet high energy UM photons that comes

635
00:36:13,000 --> 00:36:16,840
Speaker 1: streaming through. Normally, those kinds of photons are too energetic

636
00:36:16,880 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 1: to interact with the phosphorus or the boron that's that

637
00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:23,560
Speaker 1: uh silicon is doped with, so it just passes through

638
00:36:23,600 --> 00:36:27,560
Speaker 1: and it's like completely wasted high energy light. The parov

639
00:36:27,680 --> 00:36:31,720
Speaker 1: skite actually interacts with those way more efficiently. The problem

640
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:34,600
Speaker 1: is it doesn't really interact with the lower energy stuff

641
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:38,560
Speaker 1: that silicon does. So the highest efficiency solar cells that

642
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:41,840
Speaker 1: you can get are typically made with silicon and Parov

643
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:45,120
Speaker 1: Skype put together, so it captures as much stuff as

644
00:36:45,120 --> 00:36:47,600
Speaker 1: you can hope for. And these are starting to creep

645
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:51,799
Speaker 1: up into the the high twenties low thirties range, and

646
00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:56,040
Speaker 1: as Parov Skype manufacturing gets easier and easier, we should

647
00:36:56,040 --> 00:36:59,440
Speaker 1: be able to expect to see solar panels that are

648
00:36:59,600 --> 00:37:03,200
Speaker 1: you know, thirt efficient, which is a lot you know

649
00:37:03,280 --> 00:37:06,560
Speaker 1: that extra seven percent, that's a huge difference. Yeah, and

650
00:37:06,560 --> 00:37:08,719
Speaker 1: I don't think we mentioned the reason that we're trying

651
00:37:08,760 --> 00:37:10,839
Speaker 1: to make this move to prov skite anyway. It's because

652
00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:12,920
Speaker 1: it's it's cheaper. You can make it cheaper than the

653
00:37:12,920 --> 00:37:18,399
Speaker 1: silicon ones. So you know, one day, hopefully, uh, they

654
00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:20,839
Speaker 1: could be all prop skite because they're developing stuff that's

655
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:23,440
Speaker 1: going to capture more of what the silicon can capture

656
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 1: in that right. Yeah, that's yeah, that would be wonderful

657
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:29,080
Speaker 1: if if they figure out how to tinker with provskite

658
00:37:29,120 --> 00:37:31,000
Speaker 1: so that they don't need the silicon at all, because

659
00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:33,080
Speaker 1: there are a lot of problems with silicon, which we'll

660
00:37:33,120 --> 00:37:36,239
Speaker 1: talk about. Right. So, um I mentioned earlier in the

661
00:37:36,239 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 1: show about uh selling your um like pay me power company,

662
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:43,879
Speaker 1: and that wasn't a joke. In fact, I didn't even

663
00:37:43,920 --> 00:37:46,319
Speaker 1: know this was a thing until like shamefully like five

664
00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:49,759
Speaker 1: years ago, when I learned that if you produce more

665
00:37:50,000 --> 00:37:53,040
Speaker 1: energy with your system then you use you can actually

666
00:37:53,680 --> 00:37:56,480
Speaker 1: not everywhere, but in many many places now you can

667
00:37:56,520 --> 00:37:59,479
Speaker 1: sell that back to the power company and not only

668
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:02,000
Speaker 1: are you not paying. In fact, we talked about this

669
00:38:02,040 --> 00:38:04,279
Speaker 1: in one of the episodes, might have been the Sun

670
00:38:04,600 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 1: or the Bill Gates Renewable Energy episode, that's what it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

671
00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:13,520
Speaker 1: I remember, but I couldn't. I knew. We talked about

672
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:15,759
Speaker 1: like grids and stuff like that, and now that's where

673
00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:18,359
Speaker 1: it was good call. I think so, But um, they

674
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:20,759
Speaker 1: will cut you a check, which is pretty amazing. Um,

675
00:38:20,760 --> 00:38:23,879
Speaker 1: and here's the best part, even to me. I was like, well,

676
00:38:23,920 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 1: I mean, do I want to check from Georgia Power

677
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:29,200
Speaker 1: for whatever nineteen dollars a month? I sort of do.

678
00:38:29,360 --> 00:38:33,600
Speaker 1: But what I would really rather do is past that forward,

679
00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:36,320
Speaker 1: pay it forward, like they say. And there are places

680
00:38:36,360 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 1: that have programs where if you have excess solar energy,

681
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:42,080
Speaker 1: you can send that to the power grid and then

682
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:45,319
Speaker 1: apply the leftover as a credit to the bill of

683
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:48,600
Speaker 1: a family in need, which is awesome. It is pretty awesome.

684
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:52,680
Speaker 1: Everybody comes out super great. Yeah, I wonder what the money.

685
00:38:52,719 --> 00:38:54,560
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the one thing I don't know. It's like,

686
00:38:54,600 --> 00:38:56,960
Speaker 1: how much more are you making? Is it a check

687
00:38:56,960 --> 00:38:59,359
Speaker 1: for nineteen dollars or is it like three d bucks

688
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:01,760
Speaker 1: a month? I don't know, And it would definitely depend

689
00:39:01,800 --> 00:39:03,960
Speaker 1: on a couple of things. How much electricity costs in

690
00:39:04,000 --> 00:39:08,000
Speaker 1: your area, and um, how much your utility company pays

691
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:11,280
Speaker 1: for buyback electricity, and then also how much you're overproducing

692
00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:13,440
Speaker 1: to you know, Yeah, there's a bunch of factors. But

693
00:39:13,480 --> 00:39:15,640
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of curious. It's like a lot of

694
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 1: money or is it do I really honestly don't know,

695
00:39:18,880 --> 00:39:21,480
Speaker 1: but every little bit counts if you're a family in need. Right.

696
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:26,120
Speaker 1: So there's another thing that would be great, Um, if

697
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:28,960
Speaker 1: you have all this excess solar energy when you know

698
00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:32,480
Speaker 1: it's really really sunny out, Um, if you could somehow

699
00:39:32,640 --> 00:39:35,759
Speaker 1: capture it to use it later during nighttime or on

700
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:38,120
Speaker 1: a cloudy day or something like that. And so a

701
00:39:38,120 --> 00:39:40,319
Speaker 1: lot of people have said, well, that'd be great. I mean,

702
00:39:40,360 --> 00:39:44,719
Speaker 1: that just makes a solar solar electric home system perfect.

703
00:39:45,200 --> 00:39:48,080
Speaker 1: Let's build batteries that do that, And so there are

704
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:52,480
Speaker 1: home batteries that are meant to be connected to solar outfits,

705
00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:56,759
Speaker 1: like Tesla makes one of those two, LG makes one,

706
00:39:57,400 --> 00:40:01,759
Speaker 1: Mercedes Benz makes one. It's a home battery. Um. The

707
00:40:01,800 --> 00:40:06,160
Speaker 1: problem is that they are also really expensive, on the

708
00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:10,560
Speaker 1: order of five six seven grand um. And so if

709
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:14,560
Speaker 1: you're spending twelve grand on your solar array and you

710
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:17,279
Speaker 1: spend an extra six grand on your home battery, you

711
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:20,560
Speaker 1: just spent an extra fift of the cost of your

712
00:40:20,600 --> 00:40:24,720
Speaker 1: solar array to back up your your home with solar

713
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:28,120
Speaker 1: electricity when the sun is not shining as much. That's

714
00:40:28,160 --> 00:40:32,000
Speaker 1: a huge enormous added expense. Yeah. And the one thing

715
00:40:32,040 --> 00:40:34,600
Speaker 1: I was because you know, like you, I think my

716
00:40:34,719 --> 00:40:36,760
Speaker 1: interest got peaked a little bit from my own house.

717
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:39,399
Speaker 1: It's like, man, this is really appealing to me now

718
00:40:40,120 --> 00:40:42,040
Speaker 1: here my late forties. I could buy a system that

719
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:45,319
Speaker 1: will see me through till my death. Probably I don't

720
00:40:45,320 --> 00:40:47,239
Speaker 1: know about that. At the time it starts breaking down,

721
00:40:47,280 --> 00:40:50,600
Speaker 1: I'll be long gone. Well, let's hope not. Uh. And

722
00:40:50,719 --> 00:40:52,279
Speaker 1: my first thought was, you know, we get a lot

723
00:40:52,320 --> 00:40:55,400
Speaker 1: of brown outs and blackouts and power outages for some

724
00:40:55,440 --> 00:40:58,120
Speaker 1: reason in my neighborhood. Is just it just happens a lot.

725
00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:02,440
Speaker 1: It seems like every rainstorm. Uh, certainly anytime there's snow

726
00:41:03,320 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 1: is a brown out where it's like the powers like

727
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:08,160
Speaker 1: almost out, but it comes back and then almost out

728
00:41:08,239 --> 00:41:10,759
Speaker 1: or I think it just sort of flickers. I wish

729
00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:15,719
Speaker 1: they'd call it something else. It sounds so gross. The

730
00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:18,560
Speaker 1: brown out sounds gross. Yeah, it does. It sounds gross.

731
00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:21,360
Speaker 1: Gray out. How about a gray out? Let's call it that.

732
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:24,640
Speaker 1: Are you thinking about like a butt hole? Yeah? Or

733
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:28,759
Speaker 1: poop or something, you know, like poop just squeezing out

734
00:41:28,760 --> 00:41:32,080
Speaker 1: of your electrical outlets or something like that. Like that

735
00:41:32,120 --> 00:41:34,359
Speaker 1: sounds like a very like archbunker thing to say, like

736
00:41:34,400 --> 00:41:36,960
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go upstairs and have a brown out. Yes,

737
00:41:37,200 --> 00:41:41,000
Speaker 1: yes it does. Dropping the Browns off at the Super

738
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:44,160
Speaker 1: Bowl or okay, I get you. So the only way

739
00:41:44,200 --> 00:41:48,000
Speaker 1: the Browns could make it to a Super Bowl? Oh man, Yeah,

740
00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:53,360
Speaker 1: Texas and Ohio super happy with you today. Um So

741
00:41:54,000 --> 00:41:56,279
Speaker 1: my first thought was like, oh man, I get on

742
00:41:56,360 --> 00:42:00,160
Speaker 1: Solar and there's a blackout going on because we we

743
00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:02,120
Speaker 1: went out. I think I talked about this on one

744
00:42:02,160 --> 00:42:03,960
Speaker 1: episode when they we had the big snowstorm a couple

745
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:06,040
Speaker 1: of years ago. We were out for three and a

746
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:09,279
Speaker 1: half days. That's unconscionable. I mean, it was a long

747
00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:11,480
Speaker 1: time to be without electricity, to the point where it

748
00:42:11,560 --> 00:42:13,720
Speaker 1: was like, all right, I'm a little bit worried about

749
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:16,920
Speaker 1: my family. Um, so I thought, man, I'll get solar

750
00:42:17,080 --> 00:42:19,319
Speaker 1: and all those suckers will be without power and I'll

751
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:22,279
Speaker 1: have power. That is not the case, um, unless you're

752
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:24,000
Speaker 1: if you're storing on a battery, you can do that.

753
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:27,840
Speaker 1: But during a power outage, UM, there's something called islanding.

754
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:32,239
Speaker 1: It's very dangerous. It's basically when you're pumping electricity back

755
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:35,080
Speaker 1: into the power lines that all the that Georgia power

756
00:42:35,120 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 1: thinks and the linemen are dead, so they're going to

757
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:40,120
Speaker 1: work on these and you're still pumping power back into it.

758
00:42:40,160 --> 00:42:42,960
Speaker 1: They can't have that, so the power goes out as well.

759
00:42:43,280 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: It'll kill it'll kill alignment for sure. Um. But if

760
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:49,320
Speaker 1: you have a battery back up, you're fine. Like you said,

761
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:52,120
Speaker 1: like that's where you're getting your juice from. But your

762
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:54,600
Speaker 1: your solar system is going to disconnect you from the

763
00:42:54,640 --> 00:42:57,759
Speaker 1: grid to keep that from happening. But there's actually that

764
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:01,359
Speaker 1: happens elsewhere, chuck. If with if people have a generator,

765
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:05,920
Speaker 1: some people will plug their generator into an outlet in

766
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:08,839
Speaker 1: their house and reverse the flow of electricity from their

767
00:43:08,840 --> 00:43:12,359
Speaker 1: generator throughout their house, which can create is landing as well.

768
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 1: That crazy. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean that's a kind

769
00:43:15,520 --> 00:43:17,080
Speaker 1: of a thing. Now. That's a lot of new houses

770
00:43:17,080 --> 00:43:20,279
Speaker 1: have whole house generators built in and as soon as

771
00:43:20,280 --> 00:43:23,719
Speaker 1: the power cuts off, that thing automatically fires up right right,

772
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:27,080
Speaker 1: But this is like affordable generator that they're plugging in

773
00:43:27,320 --> 00:43:30,920
Speaker 1: reverse into their homewiring. It's not a good idea for

774
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:33,400
Speaker 1: any any anyone. I mean, there are safe ways to

775
00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:36,759
Speaker 1: do it. That is not one of them. Should we

776
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:39,640
Speaker 1: take another break? Yeah, let's all right. We'll take one

777
00:43:39,800 --> 00:43:42,120
Speaker 1: final break everyone, and we're going to talk a little

778
00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:45,200
Speaker 1: bit about some of the downsides because there are some

779
00:43:45,680 --> 00:44:13,600
Speaker 1: to solar power. I want to say, there's one other

780
00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:17,160
Speaker 1: type of battery I found. Um it's a mechanical battery

781
00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:21,080
Speaker 1: where you your solar power system uses all that excess

782
00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:24,640
Speaker 1: power to to to power a pump that pumps water

783
00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:27,719
Speaker 1: up to a raised area, and then at night er

784
00:44:27,760 --> 00:44:29,960
Speaker 1: on a cloudy day, when you need the extra electricity,

785
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:33,120
Speaker 1: it releases that water to spin over a turbine, which

786
00:44:33,160 --> 00:44:36,680
Speaker 1: creates an electrical current in that awesome a little power

787
00:44:36,680 --> 00:44:39,600
Speaker 1: plant in your house. Basically, yeah, you do. And it's

788
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:43,880
Speaker 1: green too. It's hydroelectric, solar powered hydroelectric batteries. What that

789
00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:48,800
Speaker 1: is pretty amazing. So uh, we mentioned silicon not being great.

790
00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:52,319
Speaker 1: There are it's obvious that UM to create and this

791
00:44:52,360 --> 00:44:54,920
Speaker 1: is an argument a lot of times against electric electric

792
00:44:54,960 --> 00:44:58,919
Speaker 1: cars and hybrid vehicles. UM, we all like to drive

793
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:01,840
Speaker 1: them and stuff, but is a greenhouse effect when it

794
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:05,719
Speaker 1: comes to making this stuff. Minding minding these materials, uh,

795
00:45:05,920 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 1: is not great. It is very environmentally, it's very harsh

796
00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 1: on the environment. And I don't think anyone makes any

797
00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:15,759
Speaker 1: bones about that. UM. Transporting all this stuff gonna burn

798
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 1: a lot of fossil fuels. Manufacturing all the stuff burns

799
00:45:19,040 --> 00:45:23,840
Speaker 1: fossil fuels. But like you said earlier, that is true.

800
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:27,520
Speaker 1: But once that process is finished, that's it. No more

801
00:45:27,520 --> 00:45:30,959
Speaker 1: greenhouse gasses forever, right, And some people will double down

802
00:45:31,000 --> 00:45:33,520
Speaker 1: at this point and be like, well, whoa whoa Like

803
00:45:33,680 --> 00:45:38,000
Speaker 1: creating solar cells is actually really really harmful because it

804
00:45:38,160 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 1: requires the production of something called nitrogen trifluoride, which is

805
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:45,480
Speaker 1: a greenhouse gas that's seventeen thousand times more potent than

806
00:45:45,520 --> 00:45:49,799
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide. Bad stuff. And when you work into the

807
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:52,919
Speaker 1: idea that you have a whole house battery that's made

808
00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:56,880
Speaker 1: of cadmium, lead, nickel, all all of which have to

809
00:45:56,880 --> 00:46:00,520
Speaker 1: be mined and which has to be replaced everything ten years,

810
00:46:00,520 --> 00:46:04,640
Speaker 1: your solar arrays seems much much less green. And that's

811
00:46:04,760 --> 00:46:08,080
Speaker 1: these are all very legitimate arguments. There's they're not incorrect

812
00:46:08,160 --> 00:46:13,320
Speaker 1: at all, but they're also current limitations, and they're all

813
00:46:13,440 --> 00:46:17,520
Speaker 1: surrounding production and transportation and all that stuff can be

814
00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:20,120
Speaker 1: worked out. And when that stuff gets worked out, you

815
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:24,640
Speaker 1: still have solar producing clean energy with green or with

816
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:27,719
Speaker 1: um fossil fuels. Even if you worked all that stuff out,

817
00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:31,400
Speaker 1: when you deploy them and actually create electricity from them,

818
00:46:31,440 --> 00:46:35,359
Speaker 1: they're still going to produce greenhouse gases. So solar will

819
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:38,240
Speaker 1: always have that advantage. And it just has a bunch

820
00:46:38,280 --> 00:46:40,920
Speaker 1: of kind of front loaded obstacles that need to be

821
00:46:40,960 --> 00:46:44,040
Speaker 1: overcome through breakthroughs in the short term. Yeah, for sure.

822
00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:46,640
Speaker 1: I mean, it's no contest in the end, especially if

823
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:50,080
Speaker 1: you're talking about the life of a solar system, considering

824
00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:52,399
Speaker 1: like twenty five years, let's say, over the twenty five

825
00:46:52,480 --> 00:46:55,200
Speaker 1: years of burning coal and natural gas, it's just not

826
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:57,600
Speaker 1: even close. Yeah, and I mean, like if you start

827
00:46:57,600 --> 00:47:00,959
Speaker 1: getting more and more solar um involved and like transportation,

828
00:47:01,080 --> 00:47:03,920
Speaker 1: then you knock out those greenhouse gases for transporting like

829
00:47:04,000 --> 00:47:07,400
Speaker 1: solar panels from place to place because it's solar powering

830
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 1: the transportation too. There's a lot of stuff we can

831
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:12,200
Speaker 1: do that that we just haven't quite figured out how

832
00:47:12,239 --> 00:47:17,280
Speaker 1: to do yet. But it's not physically impossible to overcome them. Yeah,

833
00:47:17,320 --> 00:47:19,520
Speaker 1: and you know, there's also people that say, hey, we

834
00:47:19,760 --> 00:47:22,960
Speaker 1: you know, the entire country could run on solar and wind.

835
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 1: Some people say maybe not. Other people say no, it

836
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:28,400
Speaker 1: totally could. But there are a lot of big obstacles.

837
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:33,879
Speaker 1: When you talk about converting a nationwide system, uh from

838
00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:38,960
Speaker 1: a fossil fuel system two renewables, it's it's not easy

839
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:43,040
Speaker 1: and frankly, it will probably never happen on that scale. Um,

840
00:47:43,080 --> 00:47:46,400
Speaker 1: maybe I'm cynical. I think I think it's cynical. I

841
00:47:46,400 --> 00:47:48,360
Speaker 1: think if we look a hundred and fifty years in

842
00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:51,120
Speaker 1: the future, maybe even a hundred seventy five, even I

843
00:47:51,120 --> 00:47:54,640
Speaker 1: would say it's entirely possible. I could see it. Well,

844
00:47:55,120 --> 00:47:57,319
Speaker 1: that would require and and if you do the math,

845
00:47:57,360 --> 00:48:00,000
Speaker 1: that's about right. That would require several generations of people

846
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:02,799
Speaker 1: dying out who would fight this tooth and nail to

847
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:05,520
Speaker 1: their grad right, certain people who would have to die

848
00:48:05,560 --> 00:48:08,400
Speaker 1: out first. But there are a lot of real obstacles

849
00:48:08,440 --> 00:48:11,960
Speaker 1: to this, um. I mean, our infrastructure just is not

850
00:48:12,040 --> 00:48:14,360
Speaker 1: built for this, Like we would have to completely rewrite

851
00:48:14,360 --> 00:48:18,160
Speaker 1: how we do things. Yeah, So the infrastructure is set

852
00:48:18,239 --> 00:48:21,080
Speaker 1: up in a centralized manner where you have a power

853
00:48:21,120 --> 00:48:24,680
Speaker 1: plant and that power plant is built wherever, and you

854
00:48:24,840 --> 00:48:29,360
Speaker 1: burn coal or whatever and create steam which turns to

855
00:48:29,440 --> 00:48:32,359
Speaker 1: a turbine that creates electricity, and that electricity goes out

856
00:48:32,600 --> 00:48:36,120
Speaker 1: to the area that that that power plant serves. That's

857
00:48:36,200 --> 00:48:40,920
Speaker 1: not how renewables like solar or wind work. They have

858
00:48:41,080 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 1: to be built where the wind or the sunlight is,

859
00:48:45,040 --> 00:48:46,480
Speaker 1: and so you have to build a bunch of them

860
00:48:46,480 --> 00:48:49,080
Speaker 1: wherever you can. And then those things all have to

861
00:48:49,080 --> 00:48:52,319
Speaker 1: be connected. So it's a decentralized way, um that you

862
00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:55,080
Speaker 1: have to connect them together to the current grid, which

863
00:48:55,080 --> 00:48:58,560
Speaker 1: means running a lot more transmission lines from these new

864
00:48:58,640 --> 00:49:01,880
Speaker 1: solar arrays that you're going to build wherever to connect

865
00:49:01,920 --> 00:49:05,680
Speaker 1: them to deliver that electricity throughout the country. Yeah, and

866
00:49:05,719 --> 00:49:09,280
Speaker 1: there's also and uh, there are fluctuations in the weather.

867
00:49:09,320 --> 00:49:11,480
Speaker 1: You know, we already talked about your sort of at

868
00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:14,479
Speaker 1: the behest of what your weather is giving you. Uh.

869
00:49:14,480 --> 00:49:17,440
Speaker 1: And we're not saying when the wind doesn't blow, your

870
00:49:17,520 --> 00:49:21,640
Speaker 1: lights go off, believe me. But it does have an effect.

871
00:49:21,680 --> 00:49:24,239
Speaker 1: And so you have to compensate for this stuff. And

872
00:49:24,360 --> 00:49:27,600
Speaker 1: compensating for this stuff, and on a national grid, UM

873
00:49:27,800 --> 00:49:30,319
Speaker 1: is expensive and I don't even think we've quite figured

874
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:32,839
Speaker 1: out how that's gonna work yet, have we. No, there's

875
00:49:32,880 --> 00:49:36,960
Speaker 1: some proposals. One is to UM basically create batteries, like

876
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:39,920
Speaker 1: just use the same solution that people have for their houses.

877
00:49:40,320 --> 00:49:42,880
Speaker 1: We just need to take that excess stuff and store

878
00:49:42,880 --> 00:49:46,520
Speaker 1: it for use when the the sun isn't shining. They

879
00:49:46,600 --> 00:49:50,239
Speaker 1: figured out that for a an electrical storage system to

880
00:49:50,280 --> 00:49:53,880
Speaker 1: store twelve hours worth of electricity for the US electrical

881
00:49:53,920 --> 00:49:57,800
Speaker 1: grid would cost more than two point five trillion dollars.

882
00:49:57,800 --> 00:50:01,120
Speaker 1: To that's quite a bit. Other people are saying, no, no,

883
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:03,840
Speaker 1: we just have to get better at more efficient long

884
00:50:03,920 --> 00:50:07,279
Speaker 1: distance transmission lines. That's what we talked about in that

885
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:09,840
Speaker 1: Bill Gates episode. One of the things was that smart

886
00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:15,280
Speaker 1: grid where we can easily shuffle UM solar that's generated

887
00:50:15,320 --> 00:50:19,040
Speaker 1: in Scottsdale up to Portland. Oregon, you know, or Portland,

888
00:50:19,120 --> 00:50:22,000
Speaker 1: Maine for that matter. Yeah, I mean they're everywhere in

889
00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:24,040
Speaker 1: the United States at some point. There's a lot of

890
00:50:24,040 --> 00:50:28,400
Speaker 1: sunshine going on at once, and you can send that

891
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:31,600
Speaker 1: to places. I know we're picking on Portland Seattle again,

892
00:50:31,640 --> 00:50:33,759
Speaker 1: but if you can produce in Phoenix and send it

893
00:50:33,800 --> 00:50:36,200
Speaker 1: to Portland, that's great. And I mean, let's let's be

894
00:50:36,239 --> 00:50:38,680
Speaker 1: honest here. Two point five trillion dollars is a lot

895
00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:42,400
Speaker 1: of cheese. But I saw somewhere someone point out that

896
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:46,480
Speaker 1: there's a an estimate that to fully convert over the

897
00:50:46,640 --> 00:50:51,640
Speaker 1: US electrical grid to solar only would be about four

898
00:50:51,680 --> 00:50:54,600
Speaker 1: trillion dollars, which, again is a lot of money, but

899
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:56,600
Speaker 1: in the grand scheme of things, and when you really

900
00:50:56,600 --> 00:50:59,640
Speaker 1: think about what that investment is going towards, it's not

901
00:50:59,719 --> 00:51:02,879
Speaker 1: that much. And frankly, it's kind of doable if there's

902
00:51:02,920 --> 00:51:05,319
Speaker 1: a political will to do it. Yeah, I get you.

903
00:51:06,320 --> 00:51:08,839
Speaker 1: Another solution would be for every house to have its

904
00:51:08,840 --> 00:51:11,840
Speaker 1: own solar ray, every car to have its own solar power.

905
00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:14,040
Speaker 1: That's what I'm banking more on is like more and

906
00:51:14,120 --> 00:51:16,839
Speaker 1: more people doing this to the point where it's you know,

907
00:51:17,040 --> 00:51:20,160
Speaker 1: it's not part of the infrastructure of the grid. But

908
00:51:20,560 --> 00:51:23,480
Speaker 1: it's a you know, still making a big dent. But

909
00:51:23,640 --> 00:51:25,560
Speaker 1: that's going to be the hardest sell because you're just

910
00:51:25,640 --> 00:51:29,279
Speaker 1: completely eliminated all of the power companies and they're not

911
00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:32,360
Speaker 1: exactly known as lightweights when it comes to things like lobbying.

912
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:36,640
Speaker 1: That's true. And another you know, you look at the

913
00:51:36,960 --> 00:51:39,680
Speaker 1: subsidies going on now, and that's really clear who's better

914
00:51:39,760 --> 00:51:43,520
Speaker 1: at lobbying. Federal subsidies for power companies who produce solar

915
00:51:44,160 --> 00:51:47,319
Speaker 1: are about five and thirty three million bucks compared to

916
00:51:47,480 --> 00:51:51,520
Speaker 1: thirty two billion dollars for natural gas alone in two

917
00:51:51,560 --> 00:51:55,920
Speaker 1: thousand and sixteen. Right, that's just text bricks and subsidies

918
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:59,759
Speaker 1: for investing in deploying that kind of energy. Yeah, and

919
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:03,880
Speaker 1: solar still is pretty expensive per megawatt hour compared to

920
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:07,120
Speaker 1: like you said, fossil fuels are just cheap. Still, they

921
00:52:07,160 --> 00:52:10,000
Speaker 1: really are. And here's here's the problem to Chuck. There's

922
00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:15,360
Speaker 1: there's a conundrum where when you deploy a lot of

923
00:52:15,440 --> 00:52:20,200
Speaker 1: solar electricity um in a utility, it actually tends to

924
00:52:20,239 --> 00:52:25,000
Speaker 1: depress wholesale electrical prices across the board. So a company

925
00:52:25,040 --> 00:52:28,359
Speaker 1: has an incentive to not deploy solar because they can

926
00:52:28,440 --> 00:52:32,000
Speaker 1: charge more for electrical produced from like coal and other

927
00:52:32,080 --> 00:52:35,040
Speaker 1: fossil fuels like they normally do. That's right, But if

928
00:52:35,080 --> 00:52:37,440
Speaker 1: you put one in your house, uh, you're not only

929
00:52:37,760 --> 00:52:41,799
Speaker 1: paying for your own elector or whatever. You're subsidizing your

930
00:52:41,800 --> 00:52:44,440
Speaker 1: own electrical bill. You possibly are getting money back or

931
00:52:44,440 --> 00:52:47,480
Speaker 1: helping a family need um. And it's also an investment

932
00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:49,799
Speaker 1: in your house. It actually increases the value of your

933
00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:54,120
Speaker 1: home because, you know, unless someone just hates them and

934
00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:56,279
Speaker 1: wants to to reak in it up and yank them

935
00:52:56,280 --> 00:52:58,279
Speaker 1: off the roof when they come in there, it's going

936
00:52:58,320 --> 00:53:00,239
Speaker 1: to be a selling point. You know, you're like, hey,

937
00:53:00,360 --> 00:53:03,239
Speaker 1: moving to this house, They've already paid for it, and

938
00:53:03,280 --> 00:53:05,440
Speaker 1: you don't have a power bill. Yeah. There was a

939
00:53:05,480 --> 00:53:08,359
Speaker 1: study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab that found that

940
00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: a solar setup increase the value of a house in

941
00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:14,799
Speaker 1: America by about fifteen grands. Right. So when I said

942
00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:16,400
Speaker 1: they've already paid for it, what I really mean is

943
00:53:16,480 --> 00:53:20,640
Speaker 1: they're passing that onto you. Exactly, they passed the costs

944
00:53:20,680 --> 00:53:24,680
Speaker 1: onto you. Do you got anything else? I got nothing else, man,

945
00:53:24,760 --> 00:53:28,719
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna legit. Look into this, let me know

946
00:53:28,760 --> 00:53:31,319
Speaker 1: how it goes. Man. I I'm really interested I have

947
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:33,239
Speaker 1: a dude, doubt like we have. I don't think we

948
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:34,960
Speaker 1: could do our whole house. But we have this one

949
00:53:35,080 --> 00:53:39,040
Speaker 1: roof in particular. Now that's uh, I can't see from

950
00:53:39,040 --> 00:53:41,879
Speaker 1: the street. It's uh, you can only see it from

951
00:53:41,880 --> 00:53:45,240
Speaker 1: one place in the house, and I think it faces

952
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:48,640
Speaker 1: south and I have to measure the panels, but I

953
00:53:48,640 --> 00:53:51,440
Speaker 1: could probably fit like eight panels up there. That's not

954
00:53:51,520 --> 00:53:55,800
Speaker 1: enough for my whole house. Hey, that whatever little bit works,

955
00:53:56,000 --> 00:54:01,560
Speaker 1: that could power my Frankenstein experiments, right exactly, you're bringing

956
00:54:02,120 --> 00:54:07,600
Speaker 1: inanimate matter back to life. Um. One other thing, Chuck,

957
00:54:08,320 --> 00:54:11,759
Speaker 1: There's a big obstacle that's facing us worldwide, and that

958
00:54:11,960 --> 00:54:14,320
Speaker 1: is that we haven't figured out how to get solar

959
00:54:14,520 --> 00:54:18,080
Speaker 1: energy from the oceans collected over the oceans to the

960
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:20,080
Speaker 1: rest of the world, which is going to be a

961
00:54:20,080 --> 00:54:23,600
Speaker 1: big challenge. But if we could figure that out, problem solved.

962
00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:26,440
Speaker 1: Just build a solar array the size of Texas, maybe

963
00:54:26,440 --> 00:54:29,080
Speaker 1: over the Great Pacific garbage Patch, and there we go.

964
00:54:29,440 --> 00:54:32,600
Speaker 1: I feel like I've seen research into that, and maybe

965
00:54:32,600 --> 00:54:35,959
Speaker 1: not the oceans, but like solar blankets over water, now

966
00:54:36,160 --> 00:54:38,560
Speaker 1: am I making that up? I mean I'm sure that

967
00:54:38,560 --> 00:54:41,200
Speaker 1: that you could have them in like coastal areas or whatever.

968
00:54:41,239 --> 00:54:43,719
Speaker 1: But that that means like you couldn't swim in those

969
00:54:43,719 --> 00:54:46,480
Speaker 1: coastal areas, you know, which is going to depress the

970
00:54:46,600 --> 00:54:49,000
Speaker 1: value of the real estate there. So I would guess

971
00:54:49,000 --> 00:54:51,480
Speaker 1: we would want them like really far off shore. But

972
00:54:51,600 --> 00:54:54,920
Speaker 1: how do you get that electricity back to you know,

973
00:54:54,960 --> 00:54:58,680
Speaker 1: where it's needed on land? That's the question I think. Yeah,

974
00:54:58,760 --> 00:55:03,600
Speaker 1: just though a big solar uh floating solar blanket over

975
00:55:03,880 --> 00:55:07,200
Speaker 1: an off shoal short oil rig and just plug it

976
00:55:07,239 --> 00:55:12,680
Speaker 1: in and just plug it in. Yeah, there you goblem solved. Uh.

977
00:55:12,719 --> 00:55:14,560
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about solar, go check

978
00:55:14,600 --> 00:55:16,320
Speaker 1: it out, see if you can maybe swing it for

979
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:18,400
Speaker 1: your house. And if so, let us know about it.

980
00:55:18,440 --> 00:55:20,279
Speaker 1: We want to hear that. And Chuck will keep you

981
00:55:20,360 --> 00:55:24,000
Speaker 1: updated too, won't you sure? Uh? And since I said

982
00:55:24,120 --> 00:55:26,239
Speaker 1: Chuck will keep you updated, friends, that means it's time

983
00:55:26,280 --> 00:55:29,960
Speaker 1: for a listener mail. Oh no, sir, you I know

984
00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:33,520
Speaker 1: you're being coy because to your right and Jerry's chair

985
00:55:33,760 --> 00:55:38,359
Speaker 1: is Alexander Williams and not Jerry. No, Jerry's standing over there.

986
00:55:38,560 --> 00:55:41,040
Speaker 1: This is all getting weird. It is getting a little weird.

987
00:55:41,360 --> 00:55:44,839
Speaker 1: We're playing musical chairs and Jerry's the loser. That's now

988
00:55:44,960 --> 00:55:48,239
Speaker 1: Jerry Snipper, the Loser. What we've done though today is

989
00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:50,839
Speaker 1: asked Alex Williams, one of our colleagues and pals here

990
00:55:50,880 --> 00:55:53,640
Speaker 1: in the office, to come in. And we don't do

991
00:55:53,719 --> 00:55:57,080
Speaker 1: this much, but when we really love a show and

992
00:55:57,640 --> 00:56:00,759
Speaker 1: someone sits fourteen feet from us, well and they do

993
00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:03,520
Speaker 1: something really special. I mean, this is special stuff we're

994
00:56:03,520 --> 00:56:05,840
Speaker 1: talking about. That's why I said, we really love it. Okay,

995
00:56:06,160 --> 00:56:08,080
Speaker 1: we asked him in, and here he is to talk

996
00:56:08,080 --> 00:56:12,000
Speaker 1: about your great show, Ephemeral. What a comfortable chair, Cherry,

997
00:56:12,080 --> 00:56:14,520
Speaker 1: I can see what a great chair is that, Frank.

998
00:56:15,239 --> 00:56:18,080
Speaker 1: This is Frank. Well he's sitting on Frank. That's right.

999
00:56:18,280 --> 00:56:21,920
Speaker 1: So welcome Alex. We wanted to have you here to

1000
00:56:22,320 --> 00:56:24,640
Speaker 1: kind of tell everybody about your show because we love

1001
00:56:24,680 --> 00:56:27,279
Speaker 1: your show and we could talk about it all day,

1002
00:56:27,520 --> 00:56:29,120
Speaker 1: but we thought it would be better if you came

1003
00:56:29,160 --> 00:56:31,719
Speaker 1: in and kind of told the folks like the thought

1004
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:34,319
Speaker 1: behind Ephemeral and what what prompted you to do it

1005
00:56:34,360 --> 00:56:38,759
Speaker 1: and what they can expect from it. So go, okay, Um, well,

1006
00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:44,120
Speaker 1: it's a it's a podcast about artifact, right, the stuff

1007
00:56:44,160 --> 00:56:47,400
Speaker 1: that gets left behind and uh, you know, trying to

1008
00:56:47,440 --> 00:56:51,560
Speaker 1: illuminate you know, maybe dark or or sort of forgotten

1009
00:56:51,640 --> 00:56:55,879
Speaker 1: corners of history by you know, when we have them,

1010
00:56:56,440 --> 00:56:59,839
Speaker 1: by playing the artifacts. And it's an audio show, so specifically,

1011
00:56:59,840 --> 00:57:02,520
Speaker 1: you know, we started with ideas of like tape and

1012
00:57:03,120 --> 00:57:08,320
Speaker 1: you know, film and video, but then you know, sometimes

1013
00:57:08,360 --> 00:57:11,280
Speaker 1: you get into areas where there's just really no artifacts

1014
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:16,440
Speaker 1: or artifacts that don't really translate into into the audio medium,

1015
00:57:16,480 --> 00:57:19,880
Speaker 1: and then so you experiment a little bit. And so

1016
00:57:20,000 --> 00:57:23,880
Speaker 1: the series itself, it's ten ten episodes posted trailer, right,

1017
00:57:24,440 --> 00:57:27,520
Speaker 1: and the first season, Yeah, the trailer itself stands on

1018
00:57:27,560 --> 00:57:30,800
Speaker 1: its own. I think you've said before, I hope. So, yeah,

1019
00:57:30,800 --> 00:57:35,400
Speaker 1: it's it's an eight minute this little story about um

1020
00:57:35,560 --> 00:57:39,120
Speaker 1: we'll call it like my first there was no podcast,

1021
00:57:39,160 --> 00:57:41,320
Speaker 1: then my first radio show. It's a show that I

1022
00:57:43,720 --> 00:57:46,320
Speaker 1: a loose you know, connection of thoughts that I would

1023
00:57:46,320 --> 00:57:50,080
Speaker 1: make on my parents Answering Machine. That was my fully

1024
00:57:50,120 --> 00:57:53,640
Speaker 1: produced first show at least that I remember. And so

1025
00:57:53,800 --> 00:57:57,880
Speaker 1: in each episode you kind of find a recovered or

1026
00:57:58,080 --> 00:58:03,280
Speaker 1: formulaly lost or um uh it just kind of overlooked

1027
00:58:03,440 --> 00:58:05,920
Speaker 1: peace and then kind of dissect it and explain it

1028
00:58:05,960 --> 00:58:08,400
Speaker 1: and talk about like it's place in the universe, right,

1029
00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:11,200
Speaker 1: And I think one of the episodes was about um

1030
00:58:11,520 --> 00:58:14,720
Speaker 1: kind of a long lost original TV network, right, the

1031
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:18,520
Speaker 1: Dumont Television Network. Yeah, you guys ever heard of Dumont?

1032
00:58:18,760 --> 00:58:22,439
Speaker 1: I had not. Uh. In the Golden Ager television there's

1033
00:58:22,480 --> 00:58:26,000
Speaker 1: four TV networks, ABC, CBS, NBC also with US Today,

1034
00:58:26,320 --> 00:58:30,440
Speaker 1: all big radio companies beforehand, I mean big, big, huge brands,

1035
00:58:31,040 --> 00:58:34,840
Speaker 1: and Dumont was a television manufacturer that got into the

1036
00:58:34,880 --> 00:58:37,040
Speaker 1: broadcasting game at the very beginning. They were the fourth

1037
00:58:37,080 --> 00:58:39,920
Speaker 1: network when there was only four. They were only around

1038
00:58:39,920 --> 00:58:42,560
Speaker 1: for I think just a little over a decade and

1039
00:58:42,680 --> 00:58:46,600
Speaker 1: something like twenty thousand broadcasts have been almost completely lost

1040
00:58:46,760 --> 00:58:49,480
Speaker 1: because things just weren't recorded then. Uh, there was no

1041
00:58:49,560 --> 00:58:51,360
Speaker 1: real way to record life television. What they would do

1042
00:58:51,360 --> 00:58:54,440
Speaker 1: is they'd make something called a kinescope, which should take

1043
00:58:54,440 --> 00:58:57,120
Speaker 1: a TV screen and you filmed it with your film camera,

1044
00:58:57,760 --> 00:59:00,320
Speaker 1: and then you have a real that looks terrible. And

1045
00:59:00,360 --> 00:59:01,760
Speaker 1: the only reason they make that is so they could

1046
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:03,920
Speaker 1: send it off to you know, you're in California and

1047
00:59:03,920 --> 00:59:08,400
Speaker 1: your affiliates not connected to New York, DC, Philadelphia, etcetera,

1048
00:59:08,440 --> 00:59:11,040
Speaker 1: on the coaxial cable and so then they show it

1049
00:59:11,080 --> 00:59:13,480
Speaker 1: once in California and then they would trash that thing

1050
00:59:13,640 --> 00:59:15,760
Speaker 1: or tape over it or you know, film over it

1051
00:59:15,840 --> 00:59:19,439
Speaker 1: because there was no reruns then right early TV was live.

1052
00:59:20,480 --> 00:59:23,440
Speaker 1: It was weird because of it. So the little snippets

1053
00:59:23,440 --> 00:59:25,840
Speaker 1: that we have of it left that the few kinescopes

1054
00:59:25,920 --> 00:59:29,000
Speaker 1: that got saved, it's something like three or you know,

1055
00:59:29,720 --> 00:59:34,600
Speaker 1: somewhat complete broadcast. They're mostly held by individual collectors and

1056
00:59:35,160 --> 00:59:37,880
Speaker 1: a fewer and institutions like the Museum of TV and

1057
00:59:37,960 --> 00:59:41,960
Speaker 1: Radio in New York. That's awesome. You also covered one

1058
00:59:42,000 --> 00:59:44,720
Speaker 1: of the topics that we've covered in the Best about

1059
00:59:44,720 --> 00:59:48,200
Speaker 1: the Call Your Brothers, which was very cool, And I

1060
00:59:48,240 --> 00:59:49,800
Speaker 1: think that's one of my favorite things about the show

1061
00:59:49,840 --> 00:59:52,680
Speaker 1: is is so wide ranging. It's like the best episodes

1062
00:59:52,720 --> 00:59:56,000
Speaker 1: of this American Life or nine nine percent invisible as

1063
00:59:56,040 --> 00:59:57,760
Speaker 1: far as your approach goes, And that's why I think

1064
00:59:57,760 --> 00:59:59,920
Speaker 1: I loved it from the beginning. You were in the

1065
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:03,280
Speaker 1: Call your Brother's episode very briefly. I know you did

1066
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:06,120
Speaker 1: a walk by, huh, I did I did a line reading.

1067
01:00:07,440 --> 01:00:09,360
Speaker 1: We'll just leave it at that will be an easter

1068
01:00:09,400 --> 01:00:12,960
Speaker 1: egg for listeners. So all all ten episodes, plus the

1069
01:00:13,000 --> 01:00:16,240
Speaker 1: trailer out they're available now wherever you get your podcasts

1070
01:00:16,360 --> 01:00:19,920
Speaker 1: right indeed, you have a second season coming. Second season.

1071
01:00:20,040 --> 01:00:24,800
Speaker 1: We did our first recording for yesterday. I nice. Yeah,

1072
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:27,640
Speaker 1: how's it going? So far? So good? I got a

1073
01:00:27,640 --> 01:00:30,200
Speaker 1: lot of reading to do. Man right on, we'll get

1074
01:00:30,240 --> 01:00:32,200
Speaker 1: to it. We won't keep you any longer, but thank

1075
01:00:32,240 --> 01:00:34,000
Speaker 1: you for coming by. And if you want to check

1076
01:00:34,000 --> 01:00:36,840
Speaker 1: out a femeral everybody, you can go check it out

1077
01:00:36,880 --> 01:00:40,240
Speaker 1: on what, the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, wherever

1078
01:00:40,280 --> 01:00:43,680
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, go check it out now all

1079
01:00:43,720 --> 01:00:46,480
Speaker 1: of those things. Someone asked me to put it on

1080
01:00:46,520 --> 01:00:48,640
Speaker 1: an old tape for them, but I haven't done that yet.

1081
01:00:48,920 --> 01:00:50,480
Speaker 1: That would be a cool way to get it would be.

1082
01:00:51,360 --> 01:00:53,960
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming by, Alex, Thanks for having me on. Guys. Well,

1083
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:55,440
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with this, like

1084
01:00:55,480 --> 01:00:59,400
Speaker 1: Alex did, you can just drop by the studio j K. Instead,

1085
01:00:59,480 --> 01:01:01,600
Speaker 1: go on to stuff you Should Know dot com, check

1086
01:01:01,600 --> 01:01:04,520
Speaker 1: out our social links, or you can send us an

1087
01:01:04,520 --> 01:01:11,280
Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at I heeart radio dot com.

1088
01:01:11,360 --> 01:01:13,520
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radios.

1089
01:01:13,520 --> 01:01:16,080
Speaker 1: How stuff works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,

1090
01:01:16,160 --> 01:01:18,800
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

1091
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:26,960
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. H