Archive
WIND ENERGY. Latest granted patents 2016-2018. Torque transmission elements
Summary
Wind turbines extract energy from the wind stream, converting it into mechanical energy through the rotor. This energy is transmitted to the, gearbox and transmission through rotating shafts. To achieve the most efficient production of electricity all elements of a wind farm should be designed to work, both under normal conditions and in strong gusty winds. They must be properly balanced, protected from wear and overheating and not subject to vibration. They should also be easily accessible for maintenance. Therefore, ensuring the high reliability of all structural elements, in particular rotors, gearboxes and transmission, is an important task in the development of components of wind turbine equipment and their operation.
A selection of patents related to torque and transmission and published by patent offices around the globe in 2016-2018 is provided for review in the present bulletin. General research methodology can be found at the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The present bulletin includes 646 patents, prepared by applicants from 24 countries and registered in 23 patent offices. The patent documents mention 219 applicants and 433 IPC subgroups.
Key Highlights
The bulletin contains statistical data on the distribution of patent documents by years, by patent offices and by applicant countries, applicant-related data (residents and non-residents), data on the most frequently mentioned International Patent Classification divisions (sections, classes, subclasses, groups, and subgroups). The top three patent offices that granted the largest number of patents were EPO, USPTO (US) and CNIPA (CN).
From the analysis of texts of patent documents presented in this bulletin, detailed information is extracted for each of the unified indicators, which include: technical problems, types of inventive solutions employed, belonging of a patent document to one or other technological segment. The results of the statistical processing of this data for the entire array of the patent documents examined are summarized in the correspondingly-named diagrams and tables. In addition to that, a list of the top 10 groups of patent documents with identical unified indicators is provided, where the groups are sorted by the number of patent documents and include ID numbers and applicant names of the documents.
Data is provided for each of the top 10 applicants, leading in terms of the number of published patent documents among the ones examined in the bulletin, illustrating their share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of documents by problems, IPC sections, patent offices. Representatives of Germany and Denmark prevail among the patenting leaders in the examined period of time. These leaders include: Siemens AG (DE), Vestas Wind Systems A/S (DK), Wobben Properties GmbH (DE), General Electric (US), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (JP), Jtekt Corporation (JP), Senvion Deutschland GmbH (DK), Aktiebolaget SKF (SE), Envision Energy (Denmark) APS (DK), Hitachi, Ltd. (JP).
The bulletin contains lists of the top 10 prominent patents having the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, the shortest patent pending time.
A list of all of the documents reviewed, arranged by the top 10 groups of patent documents with identical unified indicators and by patent offices with the indication of the ID numbers of the granted patents are provided in the conclusive part of the bulletin.
Who needs this bulletin?
The statistics bulletin under examination serves as one of the variants to monitor advanced technical achievements in the specified industrial sector. The statistical data, rating evaluations and carefully selected patent documents provided in the bulletin can be of interest for inventors, students and educators, engineers, as well as for businessmen and investors, who in one way or another are concerned with the problems of the development of wind energy production technologies.
