Visit to an energy efficient lifestyle and home –
Today on Green Spaces we visit the “green” home of the not so distant future, and the car the family will use. We go to the Honda Smart Home in Davis, California on the University of California campus. It is a 2000 square foot house that is a showcase for environmental innovation and renewable energy. It is a living space where new technologies demonstrate a vision for sustainable, zero-carbon living and personal mobility. The goal was to achieve sustainability and energy management integrated with the family car, as part of Honda’s global environmental commitment. All components add up to a reduced impact on the environment, and increased sustainability. The result: a net zero carbon lifestyle for the entire family.
The Smartest House On The Block
Meet a home that shrinks down the carbon footprint, and it can produce MORE energy then it needs
We have reached a critical time on our planet, a time where we have to figure out a way to consume less of our resources and minimize our carbon footprint if we want to leave anything for generations to come.
As a society we have to figure out how to stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution, but how? As it turns out there are some pretty smart people in the world who are working non-stop on ideas and inventions in order to help save our planet and stop hurting it.
Honda has been building and improving on automobiles that use less fuel, minimizing their carbon output into the world for years. They have Hybrids, Plug-in Hybrids, Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV), and 100% electric vehicles (BEV) that are changing the way we think about driving, helping us pay less for gas and assisting us in our contribution in greening the world.
If you have an electric or hybrid car, you recycle, you try your best to conserve water and turn off lights when you aren’t in the room or any combination of these and more, you are doing the best you can right?
Well yes, you are making an amazing effort and keep it up, but Honda has decided to create a way we can take it that much further. How much further you ask? Further. A LOT further in fact.
Honda is passionate about developing technologies that solve some of today’s most pressing environmental issues, and that passion goes beyond producing environmentally friendly and energy efficient cars. Honda wants to do more, so they have teamed up with various experts and the University of California Davis to create the smartest house on the block.
Two years in the making and just recently unveiled the Honda Smart Home is built with recycled, environmentally friendly and safe materials, utilizing science and cutting edge technologies they have been able to make the building process that much “greener”. It is of course Solar powered, maximizing the rays of the sun to power an entire household and charge your car.
Then there is the design of the structure itself, which maximizes natural light and heat by positioning the exposure in the way that fits the most harmoniously with its surroundings. Not content to just rely on the sun for power, they are using a ground source heat pump, the most efficient means of heating and cooling the house and storing thermal energy! Yes, we know it’s a lot, but that isn’t even close to all of it.
Add your Honda Fit Electric vehicle, which comes with a Honda Smart Home into the mix and you now have a home that not only shrinks down the energy consumption and carbon footprint on a massive scale, it can produce MORE energy then it needs, giving back to the local grid.
As if that were not enough, the internal heating in the floors is more efficient then standard air blowing systems, the house lighting has schemes that are fully customizable to mimic a person’s natural circadian rhythms, and you can control and monitor every single aspect of your energy consumption, heating and cooling each room differently and much more, all from an app on your smart phone or tablet!
Words on their own can hardly describe this house: go to www.hondasmarthome.com to learn more about the process it took to design and build, you will be amazed by all the technologies that make it possible.
