While I prefer a mix of sources to avoid correlated black swan failures, technically you could power the world just fine with distributed PV and a sufficiently fat[0] wire connecting everything.
Fuel cells don't store energy at all, so your point there makes no sense. Also, large scale hydrogen storage for the grid would likely use combined cycle power plants to convert the hydrogen back to electrical energy, not fuel cells.
Hydrogen is cheap for long term storage because underground storage caverns can be extremely cheap (solution mined in salt formations), less than $1 per kWh of storage capacity. This is how natural gas is often stored, after all. There are alternative e-fuels but they have various problems. Ammonia is touted a bit below this comment in these responses.
Wind and solar are terrible solutions. Another 10-20 years and people will be complaining about cost of power as all the wind and solar need to be replaced and repaired. And the discussions on irreversible damage it’s done.
Lucky us we are past that already with nuclear, those plants never need replacement, neither heavy subsidies upfront, or also afterwards to dismantle and clean up.. why humans so stupid? Did I forgot that they also never need maintenance, as all the other tech? Except gas and coal plants, which are also maintenance free, and we can even make profit on the resources they consume!
Not sure how this is possible, when it’s already cheaper in many places to build new wind and solar than to burn coal in existing plants. What kind of “irreversible damage” do you have in mind?
I was thinking district heating systems are probably a bad fit for heat pumps because they use steam. But if electricity prices have a tendency to go negative retrofitting them with resistive heaters could be a win.
Are there a lot of steam district heating systems in the UK?
I was thinking low cost retail electricity would be quickly absorbed by anyone not yet on electric (or district) heating buying cheap electric heaters (and they ARE cheap).
Past year average: £97.90/MWh Right now: £5.99/MWh.
Better transmission and storage tech or better ways to scale demand at different times will be a game changer here.