Honda's homes of the future

Honda seems to have nosed ahead of Nissan in the race to offer a viable smart community of energy-efficient homes.

Nissan canvassed the idea with visitors to the Tokyo motor show last year, as did Honda, but the latter company has now announced that it will build a third 'smart' home to join its two homes already constructed in Saitama, Japan.

According to Honda, each home's power usage is based around intelligent deployment of solar panels, rechargeable battery units, a natural-gas-fired generator and a hot-water supply system. The various systems are regulated through a unit Honda calls the Smart e Mix Manager, which draws less power from the national grid and can reduce household CO2 emissions by as much as 30 per cent, the company claims. Not only does the system promise lower greenhouse gas emissions, it can work in a self-contained mode as back-up in the event of a power outage. Honda also foresees the system handling the recharging needs of battery-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.

“The Smart Home System highlights Honda’s versatility and commitment to developing new energy technologies aimed at decreasing environmental impact,” said Stephen Collins, Director and General Manager of Sales and Marketing at Honda Australia. “This is a glimpse into the future, today.”

The third home will be linked to the two existing homes, under the auspices of the E-KIZUNA project, an initiative of the City of Saitama. Honda plans to carry on testing until 2018. This sort of development is not peculiar to Japan, although the two Japanese companies appear to have taken the concept further than others, including Volkswagen, which is supplying four-cylinder petrol engines to provide base-load power and heating for larger homes and apartment complexes in Germany.

A spokesperson for Honda Australia has told motoring.com.au that the company's MCHP1.0K2 household gas engine cogeneration unit has been rolled out in "Europe, the UK and North America, specifically for really cold climates". It's the same setup adopted for the Saitama homes, based around a single-cylinder internal-combustion engine with an intake stroke volume of 110cc. Running on natural gas, the engine generates electricity for household use and the heat it builds up is diverted to heating domestic hot water, hence the 'cogeneration' tag.

"There are no plans to bring it here..." the spokesperson said, "and it's likely if it ever did come here it would be sold through our MPE division."

MPE is Motorcycles and Power Equipment — the Honda division that sells portable power generators, which arguably makes it a better fit to market a refueling device for domestic use.

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