Author Topic: Honda Smart Home at UC Davis West Village offers vision for zero carbon living  (Read 2058 times)

Travis

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Saw this at my alma mater and thought I'd share it. It employs solar, geothermal, batteries, water efficiencies, LED lights, landscaping, construction materials, and the shape of the home to achieve its results.

Quote
Honda and the University of California, Davis, today marked the opening of Honda Smart Home US, showcasing technologies that enable zero net energy living and transportation. The home in UC Davis West Village 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.

http://dateline.ucdavis.edu/dl_detail.lasso?id=14767

http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10876

http://www.hondasmarthome.com/


prodarwin

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Pretty cool.

It amazes me how simple most of the technologies employed are yet are not applied to most new construction :(

Travis

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I'm at work so I can't view all the sub links in the articles yet, but I'm curious what the upfront and continuing costs of these systems would be.

Abe

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I think the only one that will have substantial costs going forward is the battery storage system. Everything else adds somewhat to the initial cost but is almost certainly recouped over the lifecycle of the building.  Fine Homebuilding had a good special edition focused on award-winning energy-efficient houses built for reasonable budgets.

One of the main reasons these aren't used is our culture of moving around so much. Most homebuyers aren't willing to put in the extra money upfront for things that may or may not translate into higher home value when they sell in 3-5 years (people move around that much!). I feel that tax credits should be more focused on these straight forward, low-tech methods rather than massively subsidizing individuals' solar panels. They get little attention from the private sector because it's not "fancy new tech".

Travis

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As I was narrating the slide shows on the websites to my wife, I realized that this project very closely mirrors some of the things MMM is putting into his new home project (metal roof, under the floor heating/cooling).  I thought it was neat to see them on the same page.