Power-plant scale installations of solar panels from photovoltaics developer First Solar provides a nice follow-up to a story I wrote for IEEE Spectrum five years ago, when BP’s solar subsidiary cast a pall over solar energy by terminating its investment in the same technology. The followup on First Solar’s perserverance and success ran this morning on the MIT Technology Review website (see “Thin Film’s Time in the Sun”).

Worth noting that this story affirms the observation we made last week that photovoltaics technology is advancing across the board thanks to sustained investment. In First Solar’s case the sustenance came in the form of a $250 million cash infusion from Walmart founder John Walton.

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