Honda unveiled a house that the carmaker has built in the city of Saitama, Japan, for the ongoing demonstration and evaluation of the Honda Smart Home System (HSHS).
The Honda Smart Home System is a comprehensive and efficient home energy management system, which helps to reduce household CO2 emissions by producing independent electric energy for both home and mobility use.
The Honda Smart Home System controls in-house energy supply and demand, helping to manage both the generation and consumption of energy for the home such as heat and electricity, while also providing charging for electric vehicle mobility products. HSHS is also designed to enable users to secure their own supply of energy and mobility in a time of disaster.
As a part of its effort to further reduce CO2 emissions in people’s everyday lives including mobility, on May 23, 2011, Honda signed an agreement to participate in the E-KIZUNA Project run by the city of Saitama.
Currently two houses have been constructed – one as a demonstration testing house where a Honda employee family will live to enable real-life data capture, and the other as a show house for testing and public presentation and demonstration, until 2018. The HSHS installed in these test houses consists of CIGS thin-film solar cell panels, a home battery unit (rechargeable battery), household gas-engine cogeneration unit and hot-water supply system, and the Smart e Mix Manager (SeMM).
The Smart e Mix Manager is the core of the HSHS and operates as a comprehensive energy management device. It applies optimal control to electricity supplied from the commercial grid and generated by each energy device within the system. The Smart e Mix Manager reduces CO2 emissions from the home and, at the same time, provides a backup supply of electricity so that the house can be self-sufficient in the event of a power outage or disaster. Honda will also conduct demonstration testing of the HSHS that is linked with electromotive mobility products such as electric vehicles and the Internavi system.
Honda will conduct demonstration testing of the HSHS that is linked with electromotive mobility products such as electric vehicles and the Internavi system. Through this demonstration testing, Honda will aim to reduce CO2 by 50% (in comparison to year 2000). In addition, Honda will verify the backup function for household energy supply, which will provide a sense of security and comfort to the customers.
The gas-engine cogeneration system features a multi-link type high expansion ratio engine, the EXlink (Extended Expansion Linkage Engine). The gas-engine cogeneration system offers combined efficiency—the combination of power generation efficiency and heat recovery efficiency—of 92% and enables the efficient use of electricity and heat using city gas or liquid petroleum gas. In the demonstration testing, Honda will study the automatic activation of the cogeneration unit using a battery and verify its effectiveness in the time of an emergency.
Envisioning the reuse of electric motorcycle/automobile batteries, Honda will facilitate the development of a home battery unit and verify the functionality of the unit.
The Smart e Mix Manager obtains the operation information of each energy device and coordinates each of the devices that compose the HSHS, while it analyzes total household energy usage.
Honda will verify the optimal use of household energy, provided by the Smart e Mix Manager, to charge EVs and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
