Felicity Carus

Despite the phenomenal success of California's Renewable Portfolio Standard in creating a market for utility-scale solar, many in the industry are forecasting the end of the transmission line for large central stations stranded out in the desert.

Plunging PV prices have brought the world closer to grid parity than ever before as solar developers scramble to undercut each other with bargain prices bid into California's Renewable Portfolio Standard.

Concern about copper prices is not a recent phenomenon in the history of electrical generation and delivery. In 1879, Thomas Edison calculated that he would need to spend $18,000 to test his first ever electric light system around his lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

2011 was hardly a vintage year for thin-film solar in the US. Doubts about revenue-ready technologies based on copper, indium, gallium and selenide coalesced around the Solyndra bankruptcy in August. In December, First Solar decided it could not replicate its success in cadmium telluride, and shuttered its CIGS division.