Dubai: It could be a while before solar powered cars are zooming down Shaikh Zayed Road - particularly at a maximum speed of 65km/h, but the technology exists and is being developed in the UAE.

However, homes powered on renewable energy like sunlight and wind are on the horizon as technology spearheaded by the Lootah Technical Centre, is being poured into building luxurious sustainable homes for the UAE and GCC market.

The technology is already on the ground, literally, in Sudan, Sri Lanka and Yemen where 'Productive Homes' have been built by the Lootah Technical Centre (LTC) for local people. A village based around an agricultural plot in Sudan of a planned 400 homes, has 30 families currently living there.

The small houses use low-voltage lights and appliances that are powered directly from the high efficiency solar panels integrated with high capacity batteries so energy does not need to be converted - which incurs losses of up to 40 per cent of energy. The houses store 7200wh (watt-hour) of energy and can collect 2160wh of solar panel energy. Motion sensors control lights and cooling.

Abdul Munem Lootah, chief executive officer of the Lootah Technical Centre (LTC) said self-sustaining houses are part of a project to make the earth greener starting with the underprivileged. LTC is proof that such projects can be done by private companies, he said, without government subsidies or incentives.

"The government supports us indirectly. All we have is from the government. I believe there is a plan to deregulate the energy market whereby energy is pumped back into the grid& but we are still gaining experience, we are a young country. We need to be competent before we take this on," said Lootah.

A future housing project is being worked on with a similar concept to the Productive House but at a more luxurious level. "This would be up to three or four times more efficient for the UAE and the region& The project is being evaluated," he said, and could be announced in a year but is nothing like the Abu Dhabi Masdar zero-carbon city.

"We prove concepts and build them. We develop technologies we hope can be used in that [Masdar] way, or adapted but we cannot compare ourselves to Masdar. Solar energy is not cost-effective yet and we are working on an equilibrium to increase its use commercially," he said.