I'm not an electrical specialist but there are three major reasons I'm aware of that AC "won" at normal household/commercial power levels:
1. Switching. If you go look at your favorite part supplier you can find a bunch of switches that are rated to switch 250 volts AC and pass 16 amps, enough for basically any standard household outlet anywhere in the world. Those same switches are only rated for 24 volts DC. Why? Because of arcing. AC voltage passes through zero twice a cycle, which means that any arc that may be formed will self-extinguish within a hundredth of a second. DC doesn't do that, so the arc potential has to be limited either by reducing the voltage or increasing the size/complexity/cost of the switch/relay/contactor itself. This also applies to any connectors that may be unplugged under power like wall outlets. If you want to do the same amount of work with DC as you do with AC you basically get the choice between doing it at lower voltage with thick expensive wires or doing it at higher voltage with expensive switches, relays, outlets, etc.
2. Motors. Synchronous AC motors are EVERYWHERE. They're simple, cheap, efficient, and as long as they're not overloaded they run at a consistent speed determined by the number of magnetic poles in the motor and the AC frequency. If you have an appliance or power tool that runs on mains power and does not offer motor speed control (or only offers two or three speed settings) it's likely one of these. Native DC motors are also cheap and simple but but have very different performance characteristics, no native mechanism for precise speed control, and flow current through the rotor which requires brushed contacts that wear out over time. "Brushless DC" motors are actually AC motors paired with a controller which is more or less a DC->AC inverter, adding cost and complexity that may not be otherwise necessary or beneficial to the application.
3. Voltage conversion. AC can use simple wound transformers to efficiently trade voltage for current or vice versa using nothing but wire and metal. You might have used or even built one in a middle-school era science class. DC voltage conversion on the other hand, the simple methods are inefficient and the efficient methods require high-frequency electronics which only became inexpensive enough to go mainstream in the last 50ish years.
None of these are insurmountable problems of course, especially these days when switch-mode power supplies, inverters, VFDs, etc. are cheaper than ever but they still make things more complicated and require going against in some cases multiple lifetimes of industry inertia to purchase equipment produced in much lower volumes which means higher costs, and especially for home applications where size and weight are not the biggest deals it can often be easier/cheaper to just run a larger solar/battery setup to counteract the efficiency losses.
In the RV and boat worlds where size and weight matter you'll find a lot more DC appliances, but those are also generally smaller capacity than a household equivalent.
1. Switching. If you go look at your favorite part supplier you can find a bunch of switches that are rated to switch 250 volts AC and pass 16 amps, enough for basically any standard household outlet anywhere in the world. Those same switches are only rated for 24 volts DC. Why? Because of arcing. AC voltage passes through zero twice a cycle, which means that any arc that may be formed will self-extinguish within a hundredth of a second. DC doesn't do that, so the arc potential has to be limited either by reducing the voltage or increasing the size/complexity/cost of the switch/relay/contactor itself. This also applies to any connectors that may be unplugged under power like wall outlets. If you want to do the same amount of work with DC as you do with AC you basically get the choice between doing it at lower voltage with thick expensive wires or doing it at higher voltage with expensive switches, relays, outlets, etc.
2. Motors. Synchronous AC motors are EVERYWHERE. They're simple, cheap, efficient, and as long as they're not overloaded they run at a consistent speed determined by the number of magnetic poles in the motor and the AC frequency. If you have an appliance or power tool that runs on mains power and does not offer motor speed control (or only offers two or three speed settings) it's likely one of these. Native DC motors are also cheap and simple but but have very different performance characteristics, no native mechanism for precise speed control, and flow current through the rotor which requires brushed contacts that wear out over time. "Brushless DC" motors are actually AC motors paired with a controller which is more or less a DC->AC inverter, adding cost and complexity that may not be otherwise necessary or beneficial to the application.
3. Voltage conversion. AC can use simple wound transformers to efficiently trade voltage for current or vice versa using nothing but wire and metal. You might have used or even built one in a middle-school era science class. DC voltage conversion on the other hand, the simple methods are inefficient and the efficient methods require high-frequency electronics which only became inexpensive enough to go mainstream in the last 50ish years.
None of these are insurmountable problems of course, especially these days when switch-mode power supplies, inverters, VFDs, etc. are cheaper than ever but they still make things more complicated and require going against in some cases multiple lifetimes of industry inertia to purchase equipment produced in much lower volumes which means higher costs, and especially for home applications where size and weight are not the biggest deals it can often be easier/cheaper to just run a larger solar/battery setup to counteract the efficiency losses.
In the RV and boat worlds where size and weight matter you'll find a lot more DC appliances, but those are also generally smaller capacity than a household equivalent.