Thankyou for linking to the CNN article. I want to learn what happened at Solar Power 2006 but have not looked for a good overview yet.
I hope the money and brains in Silicon Valley can do to solar cell prices what they did to personal computer prices. The article seems to be saying that the US electricity market is a trillion dollars and that if renewable energy can become more economical than petrochemicals, they can take over that market.

Although solar power is still two to three times more expensive than energy derived from fossil fuels, solar prices have declined steadily. In 1980 the cost of generating solar power with a silicon cell was about $30 per watt; today it averages $3 to $4 a watt. Applied's goal is to bring the cost down to $1 per watt, making it competitive with conventional power sources.

To quote a couple more paragraphs illustrating the money flowing into California:

Conley launched SolFocus last November to commercialize the technology. The timing was right. "In November we were two guys in my garage," Conley says. "Now we've got 23 employees and $32 million in venture funding in the bank." The company is ramping up its production of solar modules and hiring six new employees a month, mostly materials and optical scientists and engineers.

Perhaps no startup has benefited more from the solar gold rush than Nanosolar. The Palo Alto company, co-founded in 2002 by Internet entrepreneur Martin Roscheisen, got its start with an investment from Paul and Google's Page and Sergey Brin; all told, it has racked up more than $100 million in funding so far.