When a lower cost can be achieved, the benefits of mass production will cause a snowball effect in purchasing systems, and that time would seem to be drawing closer. The failure of solar power to be more widely adopted to date seems primarily to be due to cost concerns, where the payback periods are now quoted to be 7+ years, and thus beyond the normal financial horizon for many potential participants, whose average occupancy of any particular house is expected to be 7 years.

Much as this may seem to be a promising advance, an alternative approach is being adopted by commercial interests, in. Nine industrial partners and eight institutions will be involved in the project, which is aimed at reducing the thickness, and thus cost, of solar cells. Durham University in the UK, ever photovoltaic solar research project, with more than $12M to be spent in the next four years, starting in April. The principal investigator, Professor Ken Durose, has committed to "make a major contribution to achieving competitive photovoltaic solar energy".

The Future of Solar Energy With the current concentration on global warming, the existence of which is denied by only a few naysayers, developments in solar power are moving at a ange to fill the need for efficient green solutions to our seemingly insatiable desire for energy.