Since April 2012, as a part of the E-KIZUNA Project run by the city of Saitama, Honda has been conducting demonstration testing using two smart home system equipped houses built on land adjacent to Saitama University. A third demonstration house, which will be completed before the end of the next fiscal year (ending March 31, 2014), will be equipped with home energy management systems (HEMS) of both Toshiba and Honda.

The two companies are striving to establish a smart home system which realizes both optimized energy management in everyday life and continuous power supply at the time of a disaster and emergency through optimal control of energy generation devices including smart home appliances which comply with the ECHONET Lite standards, solar power generation system and gas engine cogeneration system, as well as household batteries and electric vehicles (EVs).

ECHONET Lite is communication standard for HEMS defined by the ECHONET Consortium in July, 2011. It defines controls for more than 80 appliances such as home appliances, smart meters, and photovoltaic systems.

In the demonstration testing, Toshiba will utilize its smart meter and provide energy management within the community created by networking the three testing houses as well as the technology which controls appliances in each house. Honda will provide energy generation and storage technologies as well as EVs. The two companies also will explore the possibility of collaborating their cloud-based services, realizing the interconnectivity of their products and reusing Toshiba’s SCiB battery installed in Honda EVs.

In addition to collaborating in the demonstration testing, the two companies will explore possibilities of joint technological verifications and establishment of collaborative business models.