Re:Two-thirds of North America at risk of energy shortages d...
by willglynn on Saturday May 27, 2023 @06:03PM
(#36098814)
Residential power here for single family homes -- the type which could reasonably do what you suggest -- is almost always single phase 120/240V. As an upper bound, let's consider 400A service. (Most homes have services smaller than 400A, and even 400A service is typically delivered to a pair of smaller panels to keep conductor and busbar sizes manageable.) Such heaters would be considered continuous loads, reducing the 400A service to 320A of current. Resistive heaters are a linear load, so we can multiply 240V * 320A to get 76.8 kW at maximum.
Hitting 76 kW is wildly impractical. Exceeding 100 kW is nonsense.
Obscenely powerful heaters are rather cheap. Assuming prices only go negative pretty rarely, you really want 100 kilowatts or more of heaters under your house to get as much free power as possible.