This week Inhabitat shined a light on the future of high-tech architecture as we brought you 20 stunning sun-powered homes that are getting ready to battle it out in this year's Solar Decathlon - including Team New York's prefab Roof Pod, Canada's TRTL solar shell house, and China's Y Container home.

ENGADGET: Inhabitat's Week in Green: sun-powered homes, retro robots and a solar laptop chipset

Shell, a large oil company, plans to put solar panels in thousands of rural homes in poor countries.

ECONOMIST: So what was achieved by ten days of talking?

Most of its profit now comes from constructing large solar power plants and selling them to debt-financed shell companies set up solely for the purpose of locking in a fixed yield based on electricity sales to utilities.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Solar Frontier, a Japanese company that is part of oil company Showa Shell, built a 900-megawatt factory and began shipment from there in early 2011.

FORBES: Nanosolar Raises $70M To Survive Tough Times