TenK Solar is not a solar thin film company but they promise a substantial increase in efficiency based on a refinement in the wiring of cells. I’m no expert but as I understand it, normal pv cells are wired such that they only generate as much electricity as the worst performing cell. In other words, if just one cell of an array is shaded, the amount of electricity generated is limited to what the shaded cell generates. This is why you don’t see reflectors set up to bounce more light onto pv cells — you have to insure that the reflected light is perfectly evenly distributed across all the cells to gain any real benefit.

These guys say they have figured out a way around this limitation so they can increase the amount of light collected through the use of reflectors made of cheap materials. Their wiring scheme allows all the individual cells to produce at their maximum capacity.

http://www.tenksolar.com/index.html

But who’s going to save the planet using industrial scale solar? I’m betting on this guy. His process produces hydrogen from concentrated solar energy with desalinated water as a byproduct:

http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/3f14672273942abdc95d82c996bf4b8f.html

Thin sheets sounds even better b/c they’ll be lighter (more roofs can hold them) and less noticeable (though the success of Prius may prove that theory wrong: http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/04/21/conspicuous-conservation-and-the-prius-effect/).

Do you have a link to a company working on solar film?