Living in a country where the sun shines pretty much 360 days of the year I’m often surprised at the waste of this super (and dependable) resource. When half the homes in Wiltshire in the UK (authors exaggeration of the truth) are laden with solar panels (trying to warm a kettle the two times a year the sun comes out to play) it seems insane that no-one really bothers out here. Of course this is a lot to do with how cheap (and readily available) the main energy source – oil – is out here. But still, when something is so plentiful and as good as free, it seems a waste.

The good news is that this is, by the looks of things, changing with Masdar signing a $615million deal last week to build a solar plant in the UAE. This should, when it’s built, go a long way to helping Abu Dhabi reach its ambitious target of achieving 7 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Anyway, this was just a nice segue into being able to mention the cool Panasonic solar powered charging table – covered on Engadget earlier today. Evidently they plan to put this into production later this year to sell, initially, in Japan. It will work with a range of devices (tablets/phones etc) which would charge – via the power of the sun – just by placing them on the table. This is cool technology and I hope a glimpse into the future for gadgets and the industry.