First Solar is engaged in the manufacturing and sale of solar modules with an advanced thin film semiconductor technology, and it competes with other solar industry players like SunPower , Suntech Power and Yingli Green Energy.

FORBES: First Solar Can Go Higher Even If PV Module Pricing Cools Off

Tiller says his company uses about one-third the manufacturing space that First Solar needs.

FORBES: Potential Competitor To First Solar Closes $400 Million Loan Guarantee, Raises $110 Million

In other words, First Solar is profiting from not just manufacturing its thin-film photovoltaic panels but the added fees that come from deploying tens of thousands of them in a solar power plant that it builds, operates and maintains and eventually sells to investors.

FORBES: First Solar Shares Spike As It Pursues Big Solar Without Subsidies Strategy

First Solar, long the king of low-cost manufacturing, decided to gradually shut down its big factory in Germany and put on hold its plans to build new factories in Vietnam and Arizona.

FORBES: Report: 180 Solar Panel Makers Will Disappear By 2015

Such big projects make sense for large solar-cell producers like SunPower and Arizona-based First Solar, since they provide reliable demand with which to keep their manufacturing plants running at peak efficiency.

ECONOMIST: Some solar plants need to be big; most of them don��t

Last year in April 2012, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology created the first plastic solar cell (Forbes: New Technique Creates First Plastic Solar Cell) which they hope will help change requirements for manufacturing of organic printed electronics.

FORBES: Scientists Create Recyclable Solar Cells From Trees