Honda Motor, Tokyo, has been assigned a patent (8,035,239) developed by Ariko Horie, Saitama, Japan, Yoshinori Nakagawa, Saitama, Japan, and Tsutomu Wakitani, Saitama, Japan, for a cogeneration system.
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "In a cogeneration system having a power plant that includes a generator and an internal combustion engine for driving the generator such that exhaust heat of the engine is supplied to a thermal load, there are provided a battery, a controller that controls operation of the thermal load, a main switch disposed to be operable by an operator, a microprocessor that controls operation of the power plant when the main switch is turned on by the operator, and an external terminal adapted to transmit an activation signal to the controller upon manipulation by the operator when the main switch is kept off. In the system, the microprocessor is operated by power supplied from the battery in response to the activation signal so as to activate the power plant. With this, even when the operator stays at a place away from the main switch, the power plant can be activated to supply power to electrical loads."
The patent application was filed on Jan. 22, 2009 (12/321,518). The full-text of the patent can be found at Here...