[Bored chemist]

Yes but solar in the uk is not really an efficient option

Why did you think in terms of just a UK grid?
It's sunny down South.

[alancalverd]

I read an interesting article a couple of days ago about a fuel-cell powered recharging point for electric cars. At first glance it seems absurd, but the inventors make the point that unlike mains-powered rechargers (or even electrically-powered petrol pumps) , they don't need a new fixed infrastructure, so can be set up anywhere at all, and huge quantites of hydrogen are generated as waste by all sorts of industries, so the fuel is inherently free.

Nevertheless, you still have the problem of limited energy density in the car batteries and the need for massive capital and energy investment to replace the entire vehicle fleet, most of which is working perfectly well and has a life expectancy of at least  5 years. I think the future fuel will be synthetic diesel made from atmospheric CO2.

[Petrochemicals]

Yes but solar in the uk is not really an efficient option

Why did you think in terms of just a UK grid?
It's sunny down South.

If your on abot the energy make up in future, the obvious problem is the weather, so 6 months storage again ! The angle of the earth doesnt help. This infrastructure will be redundant during the winter so coupled with massive storage, you will still have to have even more over capacity.

If you think that a small ammount of energy used is electricity we would require alot of solar, and we need that for plants, although we could put the plants inside and grow them under lights I suppose.

Energy use in the United Kingdom stood at 2,249 TWh (193.4 million tonnes of oil equivalent) in 2014.[1] This equates to energy consumption per capita of 34.82 MWh (3.00 tonnes of oil equivalent) compared to a 2010 world average of 21.54 MWh (1.85 tonnes of oil equivalent).[2] Demand for electricity in 2014 was 34.42GW on average[3] (301.7TWh over the year) coming from a total electricity generation of 335.0TWh.[4]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom

[Bored chemist]

Yes but solar in the uk is not really an efficient option

Why did you think in terms of just a UK grid?
It's sunny down South.

If your on abot the energy make up in future, the obvious problem is the weather, so 6 months storage again ! The angle of the earth doesnt help. This infrastructure will be redundant during the winter so coupled with massive storage, you will still have to have even more over capacity.

If you think that a small ammount of energy used is electricity we would require alot of solar, and we need that for plants, although we could put the plants inside and grow them under lights I suppose.

Energy use in the United Kingdom stood at 2,249 TWh (193.4 million tonnes of oil equivalent) in 2014.[1] This equates to energy consumption per capita of 34.82 MWh (3.00 tonnes of oil equivalent) compared to a 2010 world average of 21.54 MWh (1.85 tonnes of oil equivalent).[2] Demand for electricity in 2014 was 34.42GW on average[3] (301.7TWh over the year) coming from a total electricity generation of 335.0TWh.[4]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom

You didn't think far enough South.