One of the dirty little secrets of those sexy flat panel TVs, is that they suck hundreds of watts from your wall sockets. While new technologies like OLED and Laser TV promise to be less power hungry, Sharp insists that LCD TVs can be green too.

Yesterday, in the run up to the Hokkaido G8 summit, Sharp unveiled their Zero Emissions House which includes a 26 inch LCD TV powered by an outdoor solar panel. By using LED backlighting and a special thin film battery, the solar TV consumes approximately one quarter the power of a similar sized CRT TV.

Sharp points out that this could be useful for the 1.6 billion people in the world with no access to electric power, but I wonder how many such people are likely to be in the market for an LCD TV? Perhaps one communal set for the village or something. I also wonder if such remote areas are likely to have TV signals flying around.

Still, this could be the ultimate RV accessory.

The solar powered TV is just a prototype for now.

Sharp Japan, via Gadgetell