As an explanation and further clarification, more never hurts. As to usefulness of the technology itself...depends upon cost of electricity and increased cost of vertical assemblies and the ever-present space considerations: Whether you live on a city/suburban lot or own/are building a skyscraper/possess thousands of acres of scrub in a semi-arid/arid region.

And the distance between yourself and the equator, of course; me, I would think about de-emphasizing the value of historical records of cloud coverage when I was considering design. The vertical route may also offer some additional advantages if/as the climate becomes more...interesting; as one example, I'd rather have gravity solving snow loading issues instead of me and a shovel/broom. Given the possibility that some regions may see/may be seeing an increase in the frequency of wind/hail events, were I running the MIT program their computer program would also include wind/hail resistance as efficiency trade-off design factors. (It indeed may, already...rather arrogant of me to assume that it doesn't as of yet.)

(Edit: Of course, we could just emulate Ma Nature - again - and collapse in the face of a threat such as wind or hail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSq5hLO-jpk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_W9O3GOoSg
again increasing the value of lightweight flexible polymers

Edit #something: Although were silicon cells to remain in use, it appears that MIT is also developing a process that could eventually be used to emulate the collapse-at-danger/reopen-when-safe behaviour of those plants even without systemic "flexibility".)

Fair enough...a little bit ahead of the model/measure empirical data collection parameters of the CEP2 effort, anyway, but since the thread subject was bounded by "solar energy" rather than "solar energy obtained from photovoltaic polymers", I threw it out there.

That, and I am a sucker for efficiency...I found the subject of optimizing the exposure of the photovoltaic material (whatever it is) to its power source whether at the macro level of panels/cells or at the micro level of long (if not necessarily oriented) chains both interesting and of value...if only tome.

I just bought a bungalow which is next to a two story (to the south)
I would like to go up and maybe at an angle back,
so during summer it would be exposed constantly,
and winter hopefully catch some on the top panels.
Other than that I'm hooped.

I thought this was interesting. It talks about a way to power autos, bu I wonder if it has enough density to act as a storage medium for excess wind and solar so they can be used during darkness and calm weather. Probably not available for the next eight to ten years though.

http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/smart_grid/article/battery500.html

Cheers

Solar has hit a true tipping point Many variables, of course - like will the public demand more of one form of energy and less of another regardless of the apparent cost/benefit ratio, will changes on the political front result in eliminating the expense of pollution controls or the further subsidizing of Big Carbon or a simple mandate that they be kept in business at the consumer's expense, will the PRC get peeved and slash rare earth/finished cell exports before CEP2 rides their white horse to the rescue, etc.

Regardless, there is hope on the horizon.