There's a California based company which is working on late stage development of 'thin film' solar cells which can be quickly and cheaply produced.  The product comes in the form of thin, flexible plastic sheet material which contains the embedded substrate to produce current flow from the interaction of photons with the embedded silicon dioxide. 

This stuff actually looks like old 35 mm film and can be easily assembled into panels which lastly nearly forever and are much cheaper to produce.  Not quite ready for prime time as yet I think this is the future for large scale solar farm power generation and home based power generation.

Peace and love,

Flakey