There’s a lot to unpack in your exhaustive breakdown. Here are a few somewhat random points:
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Without knowing much about these I would say “Definitely not!”. Logic says heat rises so any IR re-irradiating suface is no more efficient in raw terms than electric radiant. I would put effort (and money) into increasing thermal mass and insulation and where necessary generating heat at floor level. Passive solutions always win in the long term. Sunlight on a dark floor!
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Small “dead” spaces should be connected with controlled ventilation rather than dedicated heating/cooling. e.g. A multi-zone mini-split system is essentially an energy distribution system … the basement can serve to keep the upper floors cooler if the basement has a “zone”. If small unoccupied and out-of-zone spaces need to be kept cool/warm then they should be included in the overall airmass by leaving doors open or having active ventilation (room-to-room fans) rather building dedicated heating/cooling systems (imho) … this speaks to the complexity of balancing centralized/localized systems.
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Back to your initial solar & decarbonizing … the largest “loss”, if you can call it that, with any energy generating system, and particularly solar vs carbon, is the lost production during failure (this is where Sense can shine) and, more importantly, the lost production prior to activation. In general, solar procrastination is its greatest loss! What I mean here is if, let’s say, you spent the $20K you intend to spend on an ICE-to-EV conversion to get additional solar production, where does that put you in terms of overall carbon? The beauty of having solar is the potential constant generation over a significant lifecycle. This is a far-from-easy calculus which gets much more complicated when you include battery storage and V2G. Solar installs may last more than 20-30 years but how long do batteries last and what is the realworld carbon debt for recycling them (or not!).
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You are probably well aware of the Northern Euro approach to home heating … but check out the tanks!
- And of course, Kotatsu!