shice

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Ya! And there is a lot of research and investment into them. The problem is they lose capacity over time from being powered and drained (think phone batteries and other lithium batteries).

From what I know hydro batteries are actually really big with power companies. Basically pumping a bunch of water uphill when you have excess power, then using the reservoir like a hydro plant when you need power. They are really inefficient, but work surprisingly well at storing a lot of power

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (8 children)

Most if not all power used is generated almost instantly as needed. So when you look at solar (which is a great renewable) you run into the fact that it only generates power while the sun is out, and a specific amount of power.

This causes the problem of, how do you generate power at night and what do you do on rainy days or if a cloud covers the panels. You can substitute this with other renewable energy sources: wind, hydro, and nuclear, but wind has similar issues as solar and hydro and nuclear have huge upfront costs and take years to build.

So this is where coal and natural gas come in. Coal has the downside of being really bad for the environment but can start up within 10ish minutes of being needed. Gas is better for emissions (not great), but takes more time to startup.

A lot of companies use a mix of things along with buying and selling power with other companies (similar to a stock market). There are thoughts of trying to store power or looking at small scale nuclear plants.

Solar chart through the day:

Image

Power use throughout the day:

Image

Source: I work for a large power company

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

My general understanding of why you bulk and cut is because muscles take a lot of calories (carbs and protein) to grow and sustain growth. So in your bulk cycle you focus your workouts on pure muscle and strength growth and eat a lot which causes you to both have sustainable muscle growth as well as gain fat from the excess of calories you eat. Then in your cutting cycle you try to lose the weight you gained but when you are on a calorie deficit you also lose muscle mass. So, you focus your diet to hold as much muscle as you can while also focusing your exercises on high cardio. Again this is just my general understanding of why you do it I may have gotten some things wrong

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)
 

Hoping to get this community more active. Here is a photo I took a while back from the Top of the Rock in Tempe