Ever since the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, Japan has been stepping up its game in regard to alternative energy. Emergency preparedness, disaster management and a desire for green energy are driving Japan’s efforts.
In the past couple of years, Japan has made great strides in powering homes and businesses with fuel cells. And, now they have added a twist to this by testing the powering of homes with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles if the need arises.
According to Japan Times, “Honda will continue testing the system, designed to examine how much power such a system could provide, by supplying electricity to a single-family house once a week between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. in Kitakyushu. The experiment is expected to last two years until the end of fiscal 2014.
“The maximum power output of the fuel-cell vehicle used in the experiment is 9 kw, covering six days of power used in an average household, according to Honda and the city of Kitakyushu.”
In addition to the United States, Germany and a few other nations, Japan has been at the forefront of building hydrogen cars and infrastructure for the purposed of reducing dependence upon foreign fuels and promoting cleaner air.
And a wake up call from a 100 ft. plus tsunami has steered the Japanese leaders into more creative, yet practical uses of hydrogen fuel cell cars in times of emergency.
If setup properly, gas stations will become electric automobile emergency repair centers, with catalysis and water refills.
The automobiles will generate hydrogen on demand and will not require the dangers of storage.
The backup emergency power will be common place.
Not much use if your car, ( power source ) is washed away.!!
The Old sayings goes thus: Necessity is the Mother of Invention. It marvels me how good leader motivates creativity whilst African Leaders all they think about is wining and dinning hence Western World keep on creating comfort for humanity.
Thumbs up for Japan is being leading the world in creative invention immediately after the second world war.
It’s a great innovation,specially for many countries in Asia where Power shortage is norm.
IMHO, this would be a useful option. If you can’t drive away from the disaster, at least you could have limited power for a while.
It is easy to see that central power utilities would not like this tech (micro-gen). Let’s see if big Auto gets behind it, or this will end up as niche tech.