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Man how many times have we seen these stories already - "cheap solar power discovery, will make solar pv affordable" but then years later nothing has changed.

If you think "nothing has changed" over the years then you haven't been paying attention. As shown in the graph at the link, the price has declined dramatically in the last decade.

I would set up solar pv all over my property if it was just a bit more cost effective...

So would a lot of people, as soon as the cost of solar power becomes less than the cost of (whatever power source they are using now). For most people (barring subsidies) that hasn't happened yet, but it's looking pretty inevitable that the lines will cross for many within the next few years. And when they do, it will be largely thanks to the eventual productization of the technologies you kept reading about over the years (and other efficiency advances that you didn't read about, since they didn't make for an interesting new article).

So to sum up: quit complaining, the articles you read here are the first stage of a pipelined process, the fruits of which always lag a number of years behind the news, but the advances do arrive eventually.