Lower-tech energy storage like large water holding tanks into which you pump water during peak generation times would probably be a cheaper bulk storage solution until at least a couple more battery technology revolutions have occurred.

I lost a TON there as this precipitated bankruptcy was a scheme to prevent a much anticipated Chinese takeover. Besides the company has been a collateral victim of the silly bipartisan political games heating up in those election times :(

Many of these new solar technologies are complementary – you could combine several of them to get a bigger efficiency boost than with any one of them alone. This has the potential to dramatically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and on OPEC, with all of the attendant geopolitical problems in the Middle East.

We are rapidly approaching break-even with respect to traditional power sources, which will dramatically affect both the economics and regulation of electrical power. Much faster, in fact, than has been expected – it looks like it will be in the next year or two at most. Some of the regulatory issues that will have to be addressed will include things like selling the power back to the grid: As the cost of solar comes down and lots of it gets installed (I expect just about every large building will have its roof covered in solar panels before long, it’s space and energy that’s currently going to waste), we’ll have a situation where there is a power glut during the daylight summer hours, and a power famine during the nighttime winter hours. The power companies become, in effect, power brokers (even more than they are now) – but most of them don’t have the infrastructure in place to store all that excess power to use when we have a shortage. Some of the changes that may be required will be to allow the utilities to buy back the solar power for less than what they are selling the fossil fuel-based power (Otherwise it makes it more difficult to fund the storage infrastructure needed, plus the inevitable transmission losses mean that otherwise the power would be sold back to another customer at loss), or that power used during a summer day might cost less than power used during a winter night, or even (somewhat counterintuitively by pre-solar power standards) less than the power used during a summer night. It’s one thing when the amount of solar being produced is relatively miniscule but somewhat useful for smoothing out the peak demand during the summer months (as now), it’s quite another when there’s a glut of solar power at certain times of the day and year (as will be increasingly the case over the next decade).

In any event, there will need to be major changes in the regulatory environment (given that electrical power in most of the world is produced by regulated monopolies) if we are to take full advantage of the new technologies. Unfortunately I do NOT have any confidence that this will be handled effectively by any of our politicians in this or any other country, since they tend to react to technological progress “a day late and a dollar short.”

a) why we haven’t seen any significant advance in commercial solar technology in terms of efficiency

b) if there is a concerted effort on the solar energy front or if the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing.
For example there have been what appear to be MULTIPLE small breakthroughs in solar tech over the last 5 years that could and should be combined to create one major improvement in solar efficiency if these guys worked together ala the Manhattan project.

How about this non reflective nano coating that was discovered 4 years ago (!) that would allow almost ALL the light from ANY angle to be absorbed. Thats a pretty major breakthough that could be combined with any of the other recent advances.
http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2507

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alex9000/the-solar-pocket-factory-an-invention-adventure