Home Energy Station

Posted by JohnP 12/10/2007 at 18:59

A few months ago, I wrote in my [[Thoughts On Energy]] that locally created hydrogen would be needed to convert cars from gasoline to hydrogen, even for commuter-only cars. Seems I wasn’t the first to have this idea. A few articles:

  • honda home energy station
  • Honda
  • Wikipedia
  • NY Times Article
  • Business Week Article
    The short version is they take natural gas in and provide these outputs:
  • hydrogen for the car ($600/month lease)
  • hot water for the house
  • electricity for a normal house (4+kW)
    Overall, about 30% less carbon is released than a normal house, water heater and car would require. C|Net did a very short story on this. I’d really like to see the natural gas not be the main method of conversion … perhaps solar panels & H2O could be inputs instead?

My only remaining question? Where to I sign up and how much does it cost? Sadly, the Honda FCX isn’t available where I live.

Toyota has a FCHV, but their trials seem limited to Japan.
What are US car makers doing?

Here’s a guy who decided to use Solar and Hydrogen similar to the way I suggested a few months ago.