CLTC affiliate American Honda Motor Co., Inc., celebrated completion of the Honda Smart Home US project with an open house event on March 25, 2014 at UC Davis West Village. The zero net energy (ZNE) home is a model for residential sustainability, demonstrating best-practice solutions. CLTC has partnered with Honda to develop a forward-thinking lighting design for the project.
The Honda Smart Home incorporates daylighting as well as high-quality, high-efficacy LED lamps and luminaires, and state-of-the-art lighting controls. The adaptive lighting is designed to optimize efficiency while enhancing safety, comfort and healthy circadian function.
“This is where the promise is,” CLTC Director Michael Siminovitch recently told The New York Times. “The promise is going to be on well-being, wellness, biology — lighting starts doing something for us that is inherently different.”
The Honda Smart Home US includes a photovoltaic (PV) system made to generate more solar power than household operations consume. It showcases ultra-efficient lighting and HVAC technologies, and the Honda Energy Management System (HEMS), which includes direct PV-to-vehicle DC battery charging for the home’s Honda Fit EV, eliminating energy losses associated with solar inverters while factoring the energy needs of daily commuters into the net-zero design.