Long regarded by analysts as the solar industry bellwether, Arizona-based manufacturer First Solar is solidifying its position as a solar power behemoth, a powerhouse with enormous coffers and global reach. As part of its efforts to grow its utility business, yesterday it opened the largest photovoltaic solar power station in California, a plant in the city of Blythe with a generating capacity of 21 megawatts (sufficient power for 17,000 homes) and a 20-year purchase agreement with Southern California Edison. The 21-megawatt plant is only the latest in a series of planned expansions for First Solar, which includes a 48-megawatt plant in Nevada to provide electricity to Pacific Gas & Electric subscribers in California, with the plant slated to begin construction in January 2010 and reach completion by the end of the year. With California’s utilities companies scrambling to reach the state’s ambitious mandates—one third of the state’s electricity has to come from renewable energy sources by 2020—the hope appears to be that the growth will benefit everybody.

First Solar, however, isn’t limiting its sights to national borders. Indeed, it has already made a well-publicized foray into China, where it inked a deal with officials in September to erect a 2,000-megawatt solar farm in the Mongolian desert. The solar module maker also has plans to collaborate with Paris-based EDF Energies Nouvelles to build a €100 million ($150 million US) manufacturing plant near Bordeaux, France, which the two companies said will have a generating capacity of over 100 megawatts. Eight additional manufacturing lines in Malaysia are in the pipeline as well.

But why the untrammeled expansion at this time? (For goodness’ sake, don’t they know we’re in a recession?!) As Reuters reports, First Solar sees a stronger year in 2010 and will increase output in 2011, which some analysts take to be a bullish sign. It expects its net sales for the fiscal year 2010 to be somewhere between $2.7 billion and $2.9 billion and Earnings Per Share (EPS) of $6.05 to $6.85.

Nevertheless, concerns over panel oversupply and First Solar’s movement from primarily selling solar panels to developing solar farms have kept the financial outlook tempered. Furthermore, the company, which makes thin-film cadmium-telluride solar panels, has the lowest production costs per watt in the industry, but its panels are also less efficient than the silicon-based panels made by some of its rivals, such as SunPower Corp. or Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd. Investors, competitors and other industry watchers alike will wait to see how it weathers out the storm.