To catch up with the need for utilizing sunlight as an alternative energy source, photovoltaic technology has developed considerably fast in the last thirty-plus years. This article examines this technology's development from the perspective of patent growth analysis. Patent data are analyzed to find the photovoltaic technology growth trajectory. Mainly affected by environmental factors such as the price of crude oil, we observe two long-term waves of development trajectories. The current wave is found to be in the later growth stage of its life-cycle. After examining the correlation between technology development and crude oil price, a significant correlation is found between crude oil price's growth rate and photovoltaic patents' growth rate. As far as the market is concerned, it lags 10 years behind photovoltaic technology development. With the assistance of keyword co-occurrence analysis, one can classify photovoltaic patents into five groups, with each carrying a characteristic of competing photovoltaic technologies: Emerging PV, CdTe, CIS/CIGS, Group III-V, and Silicon technologies. This research observes the patent growth trajectories for each technology. Among these competing technologies, Emerging PV, Group III-V, and Silicon are still growing strong, while CdTe and CIS/CIGS are in the mature stage. This result hints at a paradigm shift for photovoltaic technology development. Sustainability is added to the technical regime in addition to efficiency, cost, and reliability. A policy other than the existing mechanism such as a feed-in tariff is suggested to stabilize photovoltaic technology development through the means of removing oil price fluctuations. Finally, several strategic issues are discussed from the technology development community's point of view. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.