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They're clearly referring to commercial energy production (i.e. solar farms) not DG applications like rooftop solar. People don't commonly have coal-fired thermal plants in their yards either.

Well, how about not thinking of reducing your dependence on conventional energy sources to zero, but to reduce it down to 20%.

If it would cost you $1k to purchase and install, but it would save you $1k in 5 years, wouldn't it be worth it?

I thought of it more in terms of "baby steps" instead of covering my entire yard.

And what efficiency are they at now? Must be really terrible. University press release doesn't say, and article is paywalled (for science!). Maybe at the scale they're currently at they don't even know.

Good luck to them getting it higher; thin film silicon can get up to 20% cell efficiency, and should eventually be pretty cheap, so they'll have to get it reasonably efficient to be useful.