Back in May, we got pretty excited about the Honda Smart Home, an experimental house that’s currently sitting on the campus of the University of California, Davis that’s so energy efficient that it pumps out more power than it uses. Translation? This means a homeowner could potentially make money off the energy it sold back to the power company.
Naturally, the public (and many of our own readers) wondered how they could get in on this prime piece of green real estate. Well, guess what? Honda has gone and pulled a Tesla (so to speak), opening up its smart home plans for all.
“Honda is publicly posting the building plans, architectural and mechanical drawings, furniture specs and materials associated with the project, including the raw 2D and 3D CAD data,” the carmaker said in a company release to NationSwell. “Our hope is that interested individuals across the world are able to use these plans as a starting point to create their very own sustainable homes.”
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So what’s so amazing about this house? As we mentioned previously, the home draws its power from renewable sources such as solar panels and has geothermal heating and cooling — so wave bye-bye to sky-high air conditioning bills. The Honda home slashes water consumption to a third of most American homes and the amount of CO2 that it releases annually is 11 tons less than conventional homes with cars. And because Honda is behind it all, there’s garage space for a Honda Fit electric vehicle that gets charged from the house’s solar power.
“Many of the people and companies we’ve met with wanted to know how they could incorporate what we’ve demonstrated into their own projects, or build upon what we’ve learned in their own research,” wrote Honda Smart Home project leader Michael Koenig in a blog post. “We want nothing more than to facilitate this effort, so today, we’re releasing a batch of files the get the process rolling.”
Those interested should visit the Honda Smart Home website to download the complete mechanical and architectural drawings.
Looks like the house of tomorrow will come sooner than we expect.
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Tag: Honda Smart Home
This Amazing Home Creates More Energy Than It Uses
What will the homes of the future look like? Will they have voice-controlled nifty appliances? A robot maid like “The Jetsons”?
Honda has a very smart — and very innovative — idea for the house of tomorrow that’s not quite on the level of George Jetson and his space-aged brood, but it’s exactly the direction American home-building needs if we’re going to slash our enormous, and unsustainable, energy consumption.
The carmaker built an experimental 2,000 square-foot Honda Smart Home on the University of California, Davis campus. Currently, a UC Davis employee is living in it, and for the next three years, the employee will monitor the power usage to see if the house is practical for the average American.
MORE: Tricked Out Zero-Energy Homes Aren’t Just for the Rich and Famous
What’s so amazing is that the home draws power from renewable sources, such as solar panels. As Fast Company puts it, the residence is so energy efficient that it pumps out more power than it uses — which means a homeowner could potentially sell energy to the power company. According to this infographic, the average home uses up 13.3 megawatt hours annually, whereas the Honda Smart Home puts back 2.6 megawatt hours on the grid. The home surpasses California’s 2020 target for zero net energy residential homes.
And wave bye-bye to air conditioning and heating bills with the geothermal heating and cooling (who isn’t interested in cheaper electric bills?). The Honda home slashes water consumption to a one-third of most American homes, and cuts more than 11 tons of CO2 annually compared to conventional homes and cars. And because Honda is behind it all, there’s garage space for a Honda Fit electric vehicle that gets charged from the house’s solar power (check out the video below).
This house may not have as many bells and whistles as the sci-fi cartoon, but if we want to reduce our reliance on planet-harming fossil fuels, Honda’s house of the future might be the kind we should be living in today.