Archive
CONCENTRATED SOLAR POWER. Latest granted patents 2014-2016. Parabolic trough
Summary
Concentrating solar energy by means of parabolic mirrors is one of the most advanced technologies 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. Thus, in the last few years new centres of commercial promotion of parabolic systems have emerged in China, South Africa and Morocco. This is facilitated by two important market elements – accumulated practical experience in the organisation and engineering provisioning of sustainable functioning of parabolic power plants, and notably increased interest in the systems of thermal energy storage, which allow the substantial increase in the capacity factor of solar power plants that is not available for photovoltaic technologies. The present bulletin includes the collection of recent patents that propose novel original engineering solutions in this sector of contemporary energy industry.
A selection of patents related to parabolic trough technology in concentrated solar power and published by patent offices around the globe in 2014-2016 is provided for review in the present bulletin. General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The present bulletin includes 582 patents, prepared by applicants from 27 countries and registered in 23 patent offices. The patent documents mention 471 applicants and 475 IPC subgroups.
Key Highlights
The bulletin provides general statistical figures, including the overall 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 most popular patent offices among the applicants were: CNIPA (CN), USPTO (US), EPO, IP Australia (AU), CIPC (ZA), JPO (JP), OEPM (ES), OMPIC (MA), DPMA (DE), IMPI (MX).
From the analysis of texts of patents 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 patents 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 patents by problems, IPC sections, patent offices and technology indicators. Representatives of the United States and Germany prevail among the patenting leaders in the examined period of time, including: Abengoa Solar New Technologies, S.A. (ES), Siemens AG (DE), Siemens Concentrated Solar Power, Ltd. (IL), Schott Solar AG (DE), Abengoa Solar Inc. (US), Gossamer Space Frames (US), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (FR), Glasspoint Solar, Inc. (US), Airlight Energy IP SA (CH), PPG Industries Ohio, Inc. (US).
The top prominent documents section includes three lists of the top 10 patents having the highest bibliographical rating, the largest number of IPC sections, and 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 concentrated solar power technologies.
