Solar need some things to get better and keep growing reaching a good point in energy production :
-Affordable energy storage for night and for moments of low sun or weather blocking most of the sun. If everyone get solar panels they will no longer able to cell excedent energy from day to pay for grid energy at night.
Unless we count the industry activity, for home solar systems sells energy to them to get credits, we need to thinks the credits system can't keep going after 40% or 50% of people get solkar panels. But industry would probably reach solar panels before ordinary consumers, since large systems are cheaper (per kw) than home systems.
-Lower cost for inversors and stabilizer, the devices required to convert electricity voltage and current. The prices for such devices are already nearly the price of the solar panels itself, since the solar panels cost get cheaper every years but the inversors hadn't the same reduction.
-Better efficience. With solar panels cost decreasing the cost for roof adaptation and instalation got more and more significative for the total cost of a home solar panel system. So if home solar panels could reach 30% efficience, instead of 16% efficince of the most used for home systems, the cost of roof adaptation and instalation would be relatively reduced for kw produced.
Architects could start study to include solar systems, by designing homes that would be quite easier to adapt to solar projects.
Solar heaters also help, like solar water heaters for showers and for swin pools. Even some solar cookers could help, for example, in Australia, where right now some people are so in trouble with energy bills that some middle class people are eating cold food from yersterday to avoid increase energy bill with cooking. And I remamber that there are solar cookers that work even 5 hours after sundow, since it heats a salt during day, melt it, and the heat energy from it can warm or cook food hours later.
If the battery project I mentioned it's really true about a battery converts heat to ellectricity, solar panels could have a thin plate battery, or many thin plate batteries in a shape of a heatsink, to convert the heat energy from the solar panels, increasing the energy production of each panels, and also cooling the panels.
That would be perfect, cheap energy storage and also a little of energy production. But I don't know the limit of heat it can convert per battery. It's not like you throw it on fire and get a huge energy, no way, but it's more like a small coin battery convert energy for a LED. So a Large thin plate could convert energy to 1000 LEDs, let's say, and 5 thin plate, arranged like a heatsink converts energy to 5000 LEDs.