Apparently bored with cars, bikes, and lawnmowers—along with the occasional private jet and humanoid robot—Honda's engineers zippered on some Carhartts and built the company's first house. Dubbed the Honda Smart Home, the structure is located on-campus at the University of California, Davis, and it's hardly a Habitat for Humanity project. It is instead an experiment in ultra-efficient new home construction, as well as a show-and-tell display for California's green police.
Some background: By 2020, all new homes built in California must generate as much energy as they consume in a year as part of the state's "zero net energy" initiative. While in theory it seems like contractors could simply plop solar panels on the roof and take a cigarette break, in reality they'll need to reimagine every material and energy source. This is where Honda comes in; it thinks the initiative could spark a potential business venture to compliment its other Cali-friendly projects, such as the hydrogen-powered FCX Clarity and all-electric Fit EV hatchback.
As for the two-story home itself, Neil Young could pen a love song to its extensive environmental features. A 9.5-kW solar panel array supplies a direct DC fast-charge connection to a complimentary Fit EV (instead of converting from DC to AC and back again), the ceilings and floors are temperature-controlled with geothermal heat, and LED lighting lines every socket. A 10-kWh lithium-ion battery made with cells used in the Fit EV, along with a smart grid computer that can send out excess power on demand, can store solar energy for use at night. This, by the way, is exactly what Tesla hopes to accomplish with its ambitious Gigafactory plan. It also makes for one hell of a backup power supply, rendering Honda's gas-powered portable generators as pointless as cave drawings.
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All told, Honda claims the Smart Home can create a net gain of 2.6 MWh per year versus the 13.3 MWh loss from a similar contemporary home. Honda hasn't laid out the cost, but most folks probably would need a second mortgage to afford a Smart Home. And that's before you consider the house's requisite sustainable wood and high-end appliances. Oh, and because California, there's a bath-water recycling system to hydrate the garden. A University of California professor will live in the Honda home and drive around in the aforementioned Fit EV, all for free. But there's a catch: the agreement includes regular visits from Honda, utility companies, and anyone seeking data from the hundreds of sensors embedded inside.
With this project, Honda and a gaggle of automakers are starting to consider the infrastructure cars encounter most every day—owners' homes—something to integrate electric cars with. So far the push has been highlighted by apps like those from Ford and GM that allow control over charge times for the Focus Electric and Chevrolet Volt—but Nissan's flirted with the notion of using the Leaf EV's batteries as backup power for a home. It only seems logical that the next step is a re-think of the home itself; after all, our houses use a lot of energy, and will use even more in the future as we hook up EVs to charging ports at home.
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
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