Panasonic has just released details on its upcoming home compost machine which will be sold in Japan in late April.

The home compost machine actually breaks down organic garbage in only a few hours. Adding to the cool factor is the ability to set a moisture level for your end product depending on your needs. Looking for some wet, sloppy compost? No problem. Want some dried up husks of compost. It’ll do that too.

The major drawback to this super slick green gadget becomes apparent when you look into how it works. It uses a platinum-palladium catalyst to break organic garbage down at high speed. Platinum-palladium? That doesn’t sound cheap. And it isn’t with a retail price expected to be a USD equivalent of $881.

The machine can also only compost two kilograms at a time but if that’s a problem then you’re probably wasting too much food anyway. Not to be preachy but come on. Food waste in America seems to be a little out of control.

There’s no word yet if the Panasonic Home Compost Machine will be available in the U.S.

Approximately 10 percent of all power used in an average home goes to TVs and black boxes. It was with this number in mind that the California Energy Commission decided that something must be done and proposed a new set of standards for TV power consumption. The new standards would insist that by 2011 TV sets use 33 percent less power than they do now and by 2013 would use 49 percent less.

This doesn’t seem to be drastically different from the direction of the electronics industry anyways, so it shouldn’t rock any large corporate boats. These kinds of regulations have been anticipated for a while now.

California has imposed some of the strictest energy efficiency standards in the U.S. on household appliances since Art Rosenfeld championed the regulations in the 70s. Thanks to the Rosenfeld Effect, Californian energy consumption has failed to rise while the rest of American states have seen it go up by an average of 40 percent.

Californians’ power bills will go down by about $18 to $30 per year thanks to the new regulations.

While the new regulations sound quite harsh there are already TVs which would fit into the restrictions. Also, the Energy Commission has stated publicly that the rumors that they would ban plasma TVs is false. Good news for companies like Panasonic who have said that it wants to reduce the power consumption of its plasma TVs by two-thirds by 2010 or 2011.

Panasonic recently announced that it was going to buy Sanyo for nine billion dollars. As a part of the Panasonic group, Sanyo will help Panasonic bust into the growing solar market by bringing to the table their large solar PV business.

As part of Sanyo’s long term commitment to solar power, the company plans to build a 70MW solar manufacturing facility in Oregon in 2009. Panasonic wants to make gains on projects like these, and while they are at it, further expand into crystalline silicon solar cells and the development of next-generation solar cells.

To add to this major expansion into the solar business, Panasonic will be making active investments in lithium-ion batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles. Panasonic hopes the collaboration with Sanyo will initiate big money contracts with some of the big players in the fumbling auto industry.