Site visit to HONE Heat Power Drive - Revolutionary Energy

During the H4.0E Irish pilot’s phase of market research and contractor identification, Shane Faulkner of 3 Counties Energy Agency (3CEA) located a company in Ireland who claim their products offer an ouput of free electricity, hot water and heating to residences via their solar powered systems. The innovative Irish company, called HONE, does so by utilising advanced nano-technology to create large volumes of free power from heat and daylight.

While at HONE HQ this May, 3CEA's Shane Faulkner gained first-hand experience of the products and systems to assess whether they could be a good fit for the pilot technology trialled and implemented within the Housing 4.0 Energy project.

A snapshot of HONE HQ, located in Kiltimagh, County Mayo in Ireland. H4.0E partner 3CEA visited HONE in May 2019 to evaluate whether their innovative low carbon technologies could be applicable in the Irish H4.0E pilot homes.

At the start of the visit, 3CEA presented to the HONE representative on Housing 4.0 Energy to give context as to why 3CEA is currently investigating various technology types and how they would fit in with the other elements of the project. Following H4.0E's introduction, Shane Faulkner (3CEA) was given a tour of the HQ and then led into HONE's display room, where the various product types were on view. During this element of the site visit, Faulkner queried the various technical aspects of the systems to better understand if and how they could fit within the proposed designs across the Irish pilot.

A demo hot water tank designed and devised by HONE to supply heating and hot water to a home.

Faulkner was then given a tour of Ireland and the UK's best energy rated home. The home integrates HONE products and overproduces energy from the 130 solar panels, which is then directed to various heating, electricity and e-car charging ports throughout the property. Whilst the home is not a very practical or real-life example on which 3CEA could base any major assumptions, it was still fascinating to see the HONE products in action and experience what was once an E1-rated home undergo a significant improvement in terms of energy efficiency to become an A1-home with little other fabric upgrades.

Without delving too much into the technical elements of the HONE products, 3CEA found the site visit very interesting and worthwhile. 3CEA will work with HONE over the short term to assess proposed designs as well as which HONE technologies could be implemented to help achieve H4.0E targets. A detailed technical feasibility and cost benefit analysis will be completed prior to finalising any decisions on implementing HONE technologies.

More information on HONE and its products can be found at: www.honeworld.com/en/.

A typical arrangement of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on the base utilising PERC technology. Solar thermal pipes (pictured below) incorporate advanced nano-technology to harness power from heat and daylight.