Undecided with Matt Ferrell
Undecided with Matt Ferrell
As a UI/UX designer by trade, I explore how sustainable and smart technologies impact our lives. And I try to dive deeper into those topics to provide context.
Topics like electric vehicles, solar panels, and renewable energy that is meant to transition the world off of fossil fuels. Smart home technology that can make our homes not only more convenient, but safer and more accessible. Wearable technology that can track our health and save lives. Or how technology might be invading and breaking down the walls of our privacy.
So in short...
Exploring how technology impacts our lives.
If you’d like to support the channel, you can do so at www.patreon.com/mattferrell.
Get in touch: undecidedmf.com/contact-me
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Megabomb be like haha
I’m in the UK and want solar but the research I did, it’s such a costly outlay but the benefits would be so much more in the future
As a brazilian I feel very bad thinking that our country has a similar potential (in terms of sustainable energy), but our bureaucracy and - of course - a corrupt government at many levels. It's bizarre how our energy bills are so expensive considering our energy sources.
$55K OMG I can DIY 17.4Kw for less than $6K USD with UPS battery power too.
tried induction cooking, but getting headaches from the massive EM?
Can't we retrieve the heat energy using static discharge somehow?
The savonius turbine would be a logical to the mediian of a freeway, could havest both the natural air current and the draft coming off of the vehicles passing by since it can make good use of the "dirty" wind could make for a usefull energy reclamation for a long standing fossil fuel industry
The use of IA to translate your voice is just a NIGHTMARE !
As a European it is really a curious sight that it is even a question. You'd have to be really eccentric to get anything else. Being in 240V and not 110V helps tho.
This is what I hate about the internet. Everyone feels they need to chime in, often without either proper context or to be arbitrarily contradictory. Speaking for myself, I don't care about your opinion. I came here to learn something or to get a starting point for my own application and things I need to think about. You don't like solar, fine, that's you. However I don't need you clogging up the comments because that makes it harder for others to find input or commentary that may further their research or to get clarification on certain point. So as I was so wont to say back in the day, Great, why don't you sit back, relax and have a nice warm mug of STFU. As far as DIY goes, I'm a machinist and while I can make pretty much whatever I want whenever I want. However, if it saves time and figuring to buy a ready made solution, then I do that. I could make a micrometer capable of reading tenths. It's not hard, actually pretty simple. But it's a lot of work and time. Or I could buy one and get started on a job that pays. DIY is awesome and I encourage it, but you're not better or smarter if you DIY. You just do it differently.
Rest assuraed, low-light power cells are a scam. No need to even research it, you don't skip your physics classes.
One of the reason Solars are not picking up is due to the technological advancement that is not maturing. While solar are long term investment yet high risk of obsolete in short term.
Why are induction appliances so expensive in the US? Video says 1000$ ? We paid 300€ for our 4-pot induction top (IKEA MATMÄSSIG) when we fitted out our kitchen, I can find portable induction tops for 60€ ..
Shut Up and take my money,😁
Thanks
@UndecidedMF Uhh... I acidentially (or maybe it was google which set this up automatically for me) listened to the german audio track for a goog amount of the video and I must say as a native speaker it is really terrible hard to understand or to listen to. It's more easy to listen to your original english voice as to try to understand the horrible accent. Sorry for that. I don't want to attack you, I just want to give you an feedback to give you the cahnce to improve..
I think it's the tariff for the US. Everywhere else in the world panels are much cheaper
10:00: And, uh, transmission.of this 500 GW...
solar cells produce more electricity when it is cool in the weather than if the weather is warm
Hi Matt, I would love to see the real world data once you've lived in your place a bit longer. What shocked me to see was the electrical usage of your home, 40+ kWh a day seems madness to me. Is that including charging an EV because my single family terraced home (no heat pump) even with my electrical stuff like computer, monitors, mandatory electric ventilation and electric cooking (ceramic, not even induction.. yet) runs me between 4 and 7 kWh on a weekend day. For reference, this is easily offset by the 3800 Wp solar array on my roof (Netherlands - 7500 euros for full installation of 10x 380 Wp panels with enphase micro inverters and some work on my electrical panel). 2023 was the first full year with the array and it generated 4256 kWh, more than expected! Do I feel I got ripped off? Not in the slightest. My utilities bill (electrical and gas) is down from 150 Euros a month to NEGATIVE 5 euros each month. Return on investment in around 50 months at this rate, which is great.
I am 100% going fully off grid with our new house. Massively overspecified panel grid, and battery bank. Supplemented with micro pumped hydro and small scale wind and a diesel genset for those bad periods that are inevitable. Why? Energy independence and reliability. No blackouts. No bills. No BS.
Solar is green scum,ALL GREEN FOOTPRINT IS HIGHER. AND We need more CO2 TO HAVE GREEN PLANET:) PLANTS WANT MORE.
very good ! very good points of information. lots of data have to be looked at. way more than money. I use solar for off grid camping and HAM radio use. works great for me. I am in Boston NY . the newer panels and MPPT charge controllers work so well today . and the LiFePO4 battery's gotten real good. I started camping with solar in the 1980's. could not do much and heavy lead battery did not last long. not true in 2024 . 400 watts solar does not take up much room and work great in over cast and cloudy days with MPPT controller. inverters gotten so much better. solar cooking even works great. look at California in spring 2024 . broke a solar power production record . even over producing in some areas. causing power prices to crash and power plaints to loose money because they have to stay on line for night. growing pains of our power grid. solar and wind makes power at different times then we use the power. so grid storage is a must. we can't add more solar/wind with out adding grid storage. and a outher problem in the power grid is much of solar and wind needs the grid to sync to to produce power. when parts of grid down due to weather ETC can cause a larger outage because solar and wind can go off line. making a bigger shortage and making it harder to cold start the grid in spots. would like more video's on that . we need a smarter power grid. and they are working in it. this will make some great video's to go along with solar and wind. the GRID connects it together.
I had a company installing solar panels in my house just over a month ago, it wasn't necessarily about saving tons of money but here is really hot (Central America) and I wanted to have air conditioners for my kid's rooms so I ended up installing 4 AC's and now they have better quality of life and I'm not paying extra to the local company. My system generates 6KwH and I have 16 panels of 550 watts each and during the day, I'm getting the full 6KwH with 0.02 KwH being pulled from the grid. The only thing that doesn't make any sense to me is adding batteries to the system. 3 batteries of 5KwH each (15 in total) costs like $9,000 to install and there's no point on saving money by spending even more money, especially if the batteries could die in just a few years. Based on my last electricity bill, I went from using 600+ KwH in a month to only 200+ KwH, it's a huge difference and I'm actually using over 900+KwH now that I have the AC's running during the day. The system itself (inverter, solar panels, installation, materials) costed around $5500 and it was installed by a company called Tecnosol. Thanks for bringing this topic, Matt!
I've been completely off grid for 7 years. I have 3 stand alone systems using second hand telecommunication lead acid battery banks. I also used second hand solar panels. The entire venture has cost me under 5K as I did all the installation myself.
IN WINDY AREAS IT CAN MEAN LESS COST TILL THEY TAX YOU FOR HAVING IT ; JUST LIKE SOLAR ENERGY CELLS ! REMEMBER NOTHING IS FREE JUST LIKE FREEDOM IS NOT FREE !...
Good video and I personally love using solar. Electricity in my area is a premium and solar is helping a lot. I use solar to recharge batteries and cells. I get plenty of device charges from the batteries and cells. Then when they lose a charge, I leave them near a window to recharge. It's been working out great and I won't be looking back. Great video and thank you for sharing. 😊
EXCELLENT vid, as usual Matt. Thank you! Cheers from Australia!
Thanks Matt, extremely interesting. I'm in Sydney Australia and am looking right now at quotes for solar with battery. Quotes are ranging from $16K to $18.5K for a 10.5 kWh battery and "at least" 6.1 kWh solar panels. I haven't researched enough yet to understand why those two numbers are not the same but time will educate me. One system provider (the $18.5K one)is guaranteeing to pay our first 7 (yes 7!) years of electricity bills if we have any bills after the solar does its thing. They simply have the bills diverted to them and they pay it - guaranteeing to me I pay nothing for 7 years once I stump up my $18.5K for the system (which then I own outright, happily). They have special electronics that shares the power I make with other clients of theirs all over the state! Bit complex but I'm learning at a fast rate, as we all are I suppose 🙂 Incidentally, our current 'fully attached to the grid' yearly bills are between $2K to $3K per year, depending on how long we run the pool pump system at times and who is staying with us re extra hot showers etc). We have a 2-storey, 4 bed, 42 square house (NOT square metres) with big regular shape areas on the roof, no little corners with one side facing west where the sun sets. We pay those bills on a quarterly basis BTW). Love YOUR solar array Matt - looks like a beefily specified one. Looking forward to seeing updates of your solar journey. Thanks so much for your vids, much appreciated. Cheers from The Land Of OZ.
I like my induction cooktop
Video should never have been made
Lived in the UK - houses there are rubbish too. Drafty as hell, single pane windows, no proper insulation, so as long as you got the heat on, it’s warm, when you turn it off, it gets cold, black mold problem pretty much every flat I lived in. Bills were really high during winter because of that. In the summer, the flats felt like a personal sauna as heat is not being kept out due to air easily moving through the walls 😅 Landlords literally don’t care, since the majority of buildings are very old, so it’s expensive to do proper renovations. So happy that I moved out of the country and I now live in a normal european apartment where there’s no problems.
more shade, and plants. nice. like paradise. ruled by people. not.
I saw some articles back in 2012 about an Australian University doing research on sliver cells and then heard nothing about it ever again (the claim was 80% efficiency) was this internet fluff? It still hasmewondering in 2024. Any thoughts on sliver cell tech?
100 % of my electricity comes from solar for almost 7 years - I am Happy
"I'm not rich, but we can afford to spend huge amounts of money for solar panels for our extremely large & brand new home!" Mate, you're rich. Not gonna regard the rest of the video. But yes, this is definitely only an option for rich people, aka, you. You don't need to be in the top 0.0001% to be rich. But around top 20%. You're in it.
Bernie Sander's ' Solar For All ' just passed, that is one help.
I installed 15kw system because I was tired of giving my money to the big and rich. And my money was very volatile sitting in the suckmarket! I’ll take the 8% guarantee return sitting on my roof VS relying on the next s*iz show they put into office.. oh and the 30% tax credit.
Hats off to you for reading the comments and taking the time to respond to some of the themes. Really appreciate that. I think your vids are awesome and they really provide a lot of great information for people who are considering purchasing a product or service you are reviewing. With solar, with most alternative technologies, there are a lot of reasons people choose to become early adopters outside of simple finance. For me, I've considered solar because I like the idea of being self sufficient, I like the idea of being off-grid for at least some of the time, and I like the idea of clean energy. If the cost is close to what I'm paying now then I would consider it. Thanks Matt for the great content!
Do you really need to consume so much packaging to eat broccoli? Just skip a video and cook it yourself, man...
Anything the government has to incentivise isn't good. Sorry. Not sorry.
My electricity rate is only $0.07-0.11 CAD/kwh (about $0.05-0.08/kwh)
NO NO Analogue just doesnt have that scale, it will take decades to catch up. Also there are accuracy issues. Too many errors and temperature variance on accuracy.
Hi. Question. I see you've used ZIP sheathing. Are you not worried about VOCs?
I'm not convinced. I mean right now AMD can show a LOT of AI processing power (AI cores) INTO a CPU, not on a big fat analog chip. And this has always been a thing in electronics, how you can simulate analog with digital. Nvidia dominates this world because AI is a lot more than just hardware, and no one is touching Nvidia THIS decade. You can't just have a piece of hardware that works well, you have to have SOLUTIONS to customer problems and no one is better at this than Nvidia, they have the best software engineers working these problems and have already solved some amazing issues. Like, find out how long it takes TSMC to make a mask, which is used to make an IC using EUV lithography and these masks have to be perfect. It's many servers running for a few days. Nvidia has gotten this down to a single server operation in less than a day. Do you know how much energy savings that is. Do you know how critical that is for TSMC to have that capability? They can charge customers a lot less money over time so if a customer has to change a circuit it's not so painful. So THAT is what AI is, it's not a chip.
Okay, the stat on drones consuming 80% less energy per package is deceiving. Not only is it incorrect, but inefficient ground vehicles exist currently. We can reduce their mass and thus their energy requirements, make them plug-in hybrids, and reduce speed limits and thus improve them as well. Also the only greener alternative to shipping is producing products domestically.
I'm coming up for two years on my installation in New England. It was a big investment but also calculated to be a good one, certainly in the long term, and those calculation are proving to be accurate. Not only have we completely eliminated any electricity bill, we are currently making around $700 per year in energy production, in addition the SRECs we sell. I have zero regrets and am so glad we pulled the trigger when we did. Planning for retirement in around 10 years requires a number of investments and varied strategies, and having this kind of energy independence goes a long way to eliminating costs as our income is reduced. Many of the arguments I hear against solar are often fueled by misinformation and lack of understanding. Sadly, in some cases, the haters just want to hate.
You owe it to all to discuss the decreasing thermal efficiencies of the newer refrigerants as this has a major impact on energy consumption and will only get worse as the EPA moves to, of all things, propane. Also flow losses in the underground pumping of the antifreeze are often ignored. Finally, the longevity of all heat pumps is limited because the heart of the system is a mechanical pump that is not immune to bearing wear, flow erosion and overheating. I agree with you that the system provides high efficiency on day one but like windmills, the promise of 25 year longevity has been shown to be optimistic. It is good engineering practice to put a margin on the claimed life cycle so that you have a replacement fund when the wonder machine fails before its planned lifetime. For a comparison, ever see a roof that lived out its warranty?
I was looking at getting solar installed on my house in Phoenix because the solar potential here is near the best you can get in the US. Up to that point, I had also completed many energy efficiency improvements to my property, because I wanted to "right size" my system. Basically, make the house more efficient so that I don't need a large system, and I can then save on costs. I got quotes from two companies, and they were about the same... ~$180/mo for 20 years. However, with all my home efficiency improvements, my power bill is only about $100 - $110/mo for most of the year. The costs didn't make sense for me. I wouldn't call it a scam, it's just not for me. I've also taken the opportunity to advocate that people make energy efficiency improvements to their home before looking at solar; your house in much more comfortable, your power bills go down, and maybe you find that solar simply isn't necessary. I understand, too, that solar may be a lot easier for many people because it's easier (IMO) to get a loan for solar than it is to get home improvement loans or to front the costs for new appliances. Or maybe you're like my friend from Wisconsin that keeps his house at a chilly 70 in the summer and had $500/mo power bills which is now replaced by a $220/mo solar payment.