Either that or solar panels, yeah. I mean it sounds like US utilities are doing a pretty bad job of delivering the unprecedentedly cheap solar power of the last three years to their customers in any case. They're still acting like we're in an energy crisis! So you have to install the modules yourself.
A normal solar panel install wouldn't let me move to resistive heating regardless of size, my house simply isn't serviced with enough amperage. My gas furnace is 100k BTU give-or-take, so I'd need >100 amps for heating alone.
Yes, 100kBTU/hour, which I assume is what you mean, is 29kW, which would be 133 amps at 220 volts, or 610 amps at 48 volts. But solar only supplies power intermittently; you'd need to draw much more power than that when the sun was shining to blast your mansion with 29 scorching kilowatts around the clock. Maybe 100kW, about 2000 amps at 48 volts. For that you'd need ten parallel #0 wires (8.3-mm-diameter copper bars) or the equivalent amount of copper divided among more wires. If it's running four stories from the parapets of your sprawling castle down to the physical plant in the basement, say 16 meters because of all the vaulted ceilings, we're talking about 160 meters of #0 wire, 76 kg of copper.
That's US$833 of copper, and probably US$2000 worth of wire, but it's also US$12000 of solar modules at current international wholesale prices. So the wiring is kind of the least of your worries!
But there's no need to get 2000-amp service from the electrical utility.
Er, yeah, the math there looks right, but my point is that with a non-exotic solar setup, I can't supply more amperage to my house via solar than what my grid connection allows... though actually looking at how the ratings work, solar capacity is going to be limited by the busbar rather than the grid connection... so I could upgrade my panel to 200A, keep 100A service and get maybe 80A of solar capacity at the max if I got around the solar sizing limits... which, as we've both noted, isn't enough to heat my house resistively.
While your description was funny, my house isn't especially palatial - it's a pretty bog-standard <2000 sqft house from the 70's with new windows and attic insulation. Unfortunately, the insulation can't otherwise be upgraded much without extension/expensive renovations, and it just takes a lot of energy to keep it heated when it's -35° outside.
Yeah, I agree. I have the advantage of living in a subtropical climate, which seems like less of an advantage when the dengue season hits, but the 3400W heat pump my wife and I bought last year does a fine job of heating our 18m² bedroom—and, far more importantly, cooling it when it's +35° outside. You, by contrast, have apparently bought a palace somewhere closer to Antarctica.
200m² of solar PV can only provide about 45kW peak anyway, and on the roof under two meters of snow it would provide roughly zero. One of the advantages of vertical panels like Joey Hess's system discussed here the other day is that they don't necessarily get snowed on, and in some orientations they produce the most energy in the winter. But without enough insulation there's a limit to what you can do. This was apparently a major reason for hanging tapestries in castles older than yours.
Every solar setup ten years from now is going to look exotic by our current standards. Think about automobiles before and after the Model T, or shipping before and after the steam locomotive.
If I was contemplating heating a mansion on Hoth with 2000 amps of low-voltage DC from solar panels, I don't think I would want it connected to a single busbar. I think I'd want it in 5–40 separate circuits to limit the risks from possible short circuits.
