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The average household would need hundreds of square meters of cells

My house has hundreds of square meters of roof with the sun beating down on it in the daytime. You know what that does? It makes my attic real damn hot. Make solar cells cheaper, with the input energy free, and that changes the math.

I live in the mountains and have modest power needs. I've run the numbers on solar and quickly concluded that even the battery banks required for modest power were cost prohibitive.

Battery banks? You only need that if you're trying to go completely off the grid. If you can get electricity for free 12 hours a day and pay for it the other 12, isn't that better than paying all 24?

You're right that energy storage is a legitimate issue with solar, but there are plenty of ways to store energy other than electrical batteries.

If your solar panels are generating more power than you need in the daytime, which is an unlikely occurrence, apply the excess power to pump water uphill; after the sun goes down, it can flow back downhill and drive a turbine.

Someone more clever than I could probably come up with something using coiled springs, pendulums and counterweights -- in a word, clockwork -- to capture mechanical energy and release it over time. Excess energy winds it up when the sun is out, and the clock releases it when it's dark.

Or the excess electricity could be used for electrolysis, and the H2 and O2 recombined later to run a generator, create heat or drive a vehicle.

The biggest mental shift in thinking about energy is going to have to be that we stop looking for one silver bullet. Until and unless we can build cheap and safe fusion reactors all over the place, it just ain't out there.

We've got to think more flexibly, be more nimble, and be able to take what's available where it is -- whether it's sunlight, wind, tides, coal, petroleum, methane, biomass, fission or fast-moving rivers -- and ramp one up and the others down as the economics shift.