Concentrated Solar Power is one of the most important developing sectors of renewable energy. Despite the slowdown of business in this sector in Spain and the USA, which happened primarily due to the rapid and widespread proliferation of more commercially-viable photovoltaic power generating systems, concentrating technologies still exist and are in the phase of adapting to modern conditions. To a great extent this is promoted by abundant inventive activity. The present review contains data on 1316 patent applications that were collected as of the date of this publication for the inventions registered in 2019 by 706 applicants from 40 countries in 38 patent offices around the world in the field related to Concentrated Solar Power (CSP). The review includes various types of concentrators. The methodology of searching and processing patent documents is provided on the Advanced Energy Technologies website.
The largest number of patent applications in 2019 was registered in the patent office of China (CNIPA) – 555, which is a little more 42% of the total number. 301 documents were filed in USPTO (US), comprising just below 15.5%. In addition to those, the top 10 popular patent offices in the world in this field included: EPO (Europe), KIPO (KR), IP Australia, JPO (JP), IMPI (Mexico), TIPO (TW), INPI (Brazil) and WIPO. In total, 92% of new patent applications in 2019 were concentrated in these patent offices.
Distribution of patent applications, published by the top 10 patent offices
| Offise | 2019 | Share of total, % |
|---|---|---|
| State Intellectual Property Office, China | 555 | 42.2 |
| United States Patent and Trademark Office | 201 | 15.3 |
| World Intellectual Property Organization | 143 | 10.9 |
| European Patent Office | 92 | 7 |
| Korean Intellectual Property Office, South Korea | 59 | 4.5 |
| IP Australia | 47 | 3.6 |
| Japan Patent Office | 36 | 2.7 |
| Instituto Mexicano de la Propiedad Industrial | 29 | 2.2 |
| Taiwan Intellectual Property Office | 25 | 1.9 |
| National Institute of Industrial Property, Brazil | 24 | 1.8 |
| Rest | 105 | 8 |
Residents of China and the USA remained the most active applicants in 2019 and their cumulative share exceeded 60%. They are followed by the representatives of Japan, Germany and South Korea. This year, residents of Australia also made it to the top 10 by the number of registered patent applications.
Distribution of countries of the world by the number of resident applicants in patent applications
Source: Advanced Energy Technologies
The inventors were most interested in Concentrator photovoltaic technologies, which were mentioned in more than a quarter of patent documents. The more developed industrial and commercially proven technologies of Parabolic trough and Solar tower were also seriously enriched by new technical solutions of the inventors, and their total representation exceeded one third of the total number of patent documents (12.5 and 17.9% respectively).
The distribution of patent documents by technology
Source: Advanced Energy Technologies
CPV - Concentrator photovoltaics; DS - Dish / Stirling; E - Experimental CSP; G - CSP in general; H - Solar heating; LFR - Linear Fresnel reflector; PT - Parabolic trough; SH - Storage CSP or Hybrid CSP; ST - Solar tower; UT - Solar updraft tower
Among technical, ecological and organizational problems, the creative efforts of the inventors were primarily aimed at solving, the following should be outlined: High costs of equipment production, High costs of repair and replacement, Low efficiency due to solar movement and High costs of maintenance.
As can be seen, almost all of them in one way or another are related to the high cost of equipment or individual technological operations. In aggregate, these problems were mentioned in more than 55% of the total number of inventors' references to any problem in the texts of patent documents (many patent applications address the solutions for two or more problems simultaneously, that's why their total number doesn’t correspond to the total number of documents).
Distribution of technical problems in the patent applications found
| Problem | Average rating | Share, % | Total 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Administrative and organisational problems | 8 | 0.9 | 24 |
| Environmental and social impact | 8 | 3 | 81 |
| High costs of equipment production | 7 | 20 | 533 |
| High costs in general | 8 | 0.5 | 14 |
| High costs of maintenance | 7 | 11.1 | 295 |
| High costs of plant construction | 6 | 6.8 | 181 |
| High costs of repair and replacement | 8 | 18.9 | 503 |
| Low efficiency due to environmental factors | 7 | 4.5 | 121 |
| Low efficiency in general | 8 | 1 | 27 |
| Low efficiency of optics or absorber | 7 | 16.7 | 445 |
| Low efficiency of secondary equipment | 7 | 2.9 | 76 |
| Low efficiency due to solar movement | 6 | 11.7 | 312 |
| Unclear problem | 8 | 1.8 | 49 |
Source: Advanced Energy Technologies
More detailed information on the methodology as well as on the results of patent researches in the most important fields of contemporary energy industry can be found at Advanced Energy Technologies.
