Solar powered watches are a dime a dozen, but most are just electronic watches with a solar panel to boost the battery. Not this steampunk inspired pocket watch: it uses the sun to spin a mechanical turbine that provides the power.

For as long as people have been envisioning the house of the future, it almost always features control initiated with the briefest of gestures. Now, in the name of conserving energy that vision could come true with a solar house designed to use an Xbox Kinect to switch off energy consuming devices with simple movements.

Power outages — is there anything as frustrating? Well, okay, plenty of things, but how many of these other frustrating things make you feel as if you've gone back in time more than a century?

It's common to see houses with solar panels on the roof harvesting energy to power household electricity, and if lucky the electrical grid. Now, a team from the University of Notre Dame is swinging back around on the idea of solar paint, and using semi-conducting particles to produce energy. This paint would be cheap enough to cover your entire house and turn it into a massive solar powered generator.