It looks like Sharp is well on its way to developing technology for solar-powered homes. They have plans to produce storage batteries for solar power systems of homes along with two other companies, Daiwa House Industry Co. and Nippon Printing Co. Find out more after the jump!

Here's some news for our readers who are fans of green living: a new partnership between Sharp Corporation and Tokyo Electron Ltd is expected to boost the production line of solar cells. With the heat seemingly getting to be more intolerable each year, we might as well make use of the Sun's barrage of rays. More details in the full article.

While a lot of us like the idea of solar panels finally becoming a cheap, viable energy source, there's a lot of serious hurdles the project needs to face, such as its massive surface area requirements, inefficiency, and astronomical costs.

One way around this problem is the implementation of a concentrator system, or in layman's terms, a lens system built to focus sunlight into a smaller, and hence more intense, surface area - like how we used a magnifying glass to fry ants when we were curious little toddlers.

"I'd much rather make a few square miles of plastic lenses--it would cost me less--than a few square miles of silicon solar cells," Jerry Olson had to say about this particular piece of technology for solar energy collection.

A research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Josh says that the advent of concentrator systems would reduce the amount of silicon collectors needed per square foot to gather the same energy as a concentrator-equipped solar panel.

Case and point? A traditional solar collector would need four-square-miles of land to be able to collect one gigawatt of electricity, whereas one using concentrators would only use up somewhere between two to two-and-a-half-square-miles. Aside from reduced surface areas, the less dependence on silicon panels also cuts down on costs, making this technology more accessible by the public.

In connection with this, some high-profile companies have already started taking notice of this new trend, and are now planning their own ventures into this alternative power source:

• Japan's Sharp Corporation just showcased their venture into this collector technology last year, introducing a Fresnel-style focusing lens for gathering solar energy - similar to the lens design we see in lighthouses.
• SolFocus and Energy Innovations, tow companies based in sunny California, are also making ventures into concentrators, though there are no details as to what they're planning.
• Spectrolab, a Boeing subsidiary, is also delving into this concentrator project, and is currently supporting a concentrator project in Australia that aims to power 3,500 homes. We'll remember Spectrolab that built the hard solar panels for the mars probe.

For anybody who remembers Die Another Day, sorry, there has yet to be word on an Icarus project, though you'll be the first to be illuminated with news on this topic. For now, feel free to take a look at this smaller, but far more lethal light-based death ray.