Honda builds smart home in California that produces more energy than it uses. The future is here my friends.

Courtesy of Green Car Congress:

Honda marked the opening of Honda Smart Home US, showcasing technologies that enable zero net energy living and transportation, including Honda’s home energy management system (HEMS), a proprietary hardware and software system that monitors, controls and optimizes electrical generation and consumption throughout the home’s microgrid. 

The home, located on the West Village campus of the University of California, Davis, is capable of producing more energy on-site from renewable sources than it consumes annually, including enough energy to power a Honda Fit EV for daily commuting. Honda Smart Home is expected to generate a surplus of 2.6 MWh of electricity over the course of a year, while a comparable home will consume approximately 13.3 MWh. The home’s occupant will be able to use less than half of the energy of a similarly sized new home in the Davis area for heating, cooling and lighting. The home is also three times more water-efficient than a typical US home. 

A 10 kWh battery energy storage system in the garage, using the same lithium-ion cells that are used in the Honda Fit EV, allows stored solar energy to be used at night, when household demand typically peaks and electric vehicles are usually charged. 

Honda’s HEMS leverages the battery to balance, shift and buffer loads to minimize the home’s impact to the electric grid. The system will also enable Honda to evaluate the second life, or re-use, of EV batteries in grid applications, home-to-grid (H2G) connectivity and other concepts. 

Honda’s HEMS is also capable of improving grid reliability by automatically responding to demand response signals and providing other grid services. If the electricity grid is overloaded, for example, Honda Smart Home is capable of shedding its load and even supplying power back to the grid. This type of smart grid connectivity will enable the mass deployment of electric vehicles and renewable energy without sacrificing grid reliability, Honda suggests.

Damn this is absolutely amazing! 

And it really shows that if we put our minds to it we could DRAMATICALLY cut down on green house gas emission and fossil fuel consumption within a very short span of time.

Of course places like Italy and Germany are already miles ahead of us in this area.

This is the kind of technological breakthrough that you know must cause energy executives buttholes to pucker all of the world.

This is another post done at my daughter's request. She is a huge green energy fan and is constantly on my to spread the word.

And she is right. This IS the future, and the faster we get there the better it will be for our country, our people, and the future of our planet.