Archive
CONCENTRATED SOLAR POWER. Latest granted patent 2016-2018. Concentrator Photovoltaics
Summary
Concentrator photovoltaics (CPV) is a promising high efficiency system technology that has the potential to produce cost-competitive solar power in the field of solar PV-technologies, especially in sun-rich regions with high irradiation values. The most widely used systems are High Concentration PV with biaxial tracking of the position of the sun. Solar stations with such concentrators are in operation in the USA, Spain, China, South Africa, Taiwan and Portugal. Low Concentration PV models are much less common, although they are much cheaper and easier to operate. Scientific research in this direction is carried out by many research laboratories, especially the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the USA. The recent patent solutions represented in this bulletin give an insight in various developments and the status of the state-of-the-art for concentrator photovoltaic technology.
The proposed bulletin is dedicated to the subject of Concentrator photovoltaics in Concentrated Solar Power and includes patents published in 2016-2018. Research methodology is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The patent bulletin includes 1101 patent documents. The patents were granted in 25 patent offices around the world. 743 applicants from 35 countries participated in the development of the inventions. 844 subgroups of the International Patent Classification were encountered in the patent documents.
Key Highlights
Statistical information presented in the bulletin includes distribution of patent documents by years, by patent offices and by applicant countries, applicant-related data (residents and non-residents), and data on the most frequently mentioned International Patent Classification divisions (sections, classes, subclasses, groups, and subgroups). The largest number of patents during the period of time under revision was granted by the patent offices of the USA and China.
Based on the analysis of each of the patents, internal characteristics of unified indicators (technical problems, types of inventive solutions, belonging to one or other technological segment) were found, which allowed specific features for each of the indicators for the entire array of documents to be defined, for instance, to define the leading problems or technical solution types that were disclosed by the inventors the most. Document lists are provided for the ten most popular groups of patent documents with identical unified indicators, including their ID numbers and applicant names.
The following information can be found for the top 10 applicants: breakdown of documents by problems, IPC sections, patent offices, technological indicators, as well as the estimation of their share in the established intellectual property market. The 10 leading applicants by the number of patent documents were: SunPower Corporation (US), Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. (JP), 3M Innovative Properties Company (US), International Business Machines Corporation (US), Soitec Solar, GmbH (DE), Saint-Augustin Canada Electric Inc. (CA), Boeing Company (US), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (FR), Abengoa Solar New Technologies, S.A. (ES) and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Angewandten Forschung e.V. (DE).
The bulletin contains lists of the top prominent patents having the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, the shortest patent pending time.
The conclusive part of the bulletin represents the lists 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.
Who needs this bulletin?
The proposed patent statistics bulletin allows the existing trends in the intellectual property market of the specified industrial sector to be timely traced, as well as the possibility of acquiring a carefully selected list of patent documents fully corresponding to the specified subject. The bulletin can be useful for inventors, engineers, scientific workers, and business representatives, who are focused on the development of solar energy production technologies.
