Solar Power at the Inflection Point

A hat-tip to Alacra's Research Recap and their Research Primer: Wind Power, which pointed me to this very interesting four-page fact piece from the International Energy Agency.  Don't be put off that they call it a "brochure," because it's a very dense, fact-rich four pages.  Here's a quote, to give you a sense:

World generating capacity of wind energy is growing at 20 - 30% per year, and surpassed 90 gigawatts in 2007 - 50 times installed capacity in 1990... Turbine costs have decreased by a factor of four since the 1980s...The outlook is for continued double-digit percentage annual growth in wind energy.

From the point of view of economic growth and sustainability, this has to be a good thing.  I'm not so sure it's a good thing for the wind-power companies themselves.  This has the earmarks of a classic capital-driven capacity boom (think railroads, memory chips or fiber-optic telecommunications): a new technology comes in, solves an important problem in a new way that is extremely competitive with incumbent providers, and attracts more capital than it can safely absorb.  If there is a limiting factor here it's that there is little 'speculative' building of power plants: people tend to build in response to contracted demand, and to the availability of power lines.  What do you know, First Solar is down almost 5% today, here's a Wikichart: