Archive
CONCENTRATED SOLAR POWER. Latest granted patents 2014-2016. Solar Tower
Summary
Solar tower is a successfully commercialized technology for concentrating solar energy, which has become widespread in many countries of the world. Planta Solar 10 Station in Spain, which was one of the first commercial projects, has been successfully operating for almost 10 years. During this time, the world's largest 277 MW Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station in the United States was also commissioned. Many new projects are scheduled for implementation in countries including Israel, China, Morocco, South Africa. The Chevron Technology Ventures and BrightSource solar thermal enhanced oil recovery project in Coalinga, California was successfully tested. The promising technology of Solar tower, equipped with thermal energy storage system, significantly expand the capacity factor and provide competitive advantages over other electric energy producers. As in any new field of technology, its large-scale promotion requires the accumulation of a number of innovative engineering solutions, most of which are issued in the form of patents.
A selection of patents related to solar tower technology 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 at Advanced Energy Technologies website. The present bulletin includes 587 patents, prepared by applicants from 24 countries and registered in 19 patent offices. The patent documents mention 414 applicants and 422 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 CNIPA (CN), USPTO (US) and EPO.
For each of the patent documents selected for the examination in the present bulletin the characteristics of unified indicators were preliminary defined, they include: technical problems, types of inventive solutions employed, belonging to one or other technological segment. This allows the internal content for each of the indicators in the aggregate array of documents to be visualized, for instance, to define the sequence and proportional correlation of technical problems the inventive solutions disclosed in the texts aim to solve. A list of the top 10 groups consisting of patent documents with identical unified indicators contains ID numbers and applicant names of respective documents; the groups are sorted by the number of patent documents.
A list of the top 10 applicants by the number of patent documents includes Abengoa Solar New Technologies, S.A. (Spain), Alstom Technology, Ltd. (China), Babcock Power Services, Inc. (USA), Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (France), Babcock & Wilcox Company (USA), Siemens AG (Germany), Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) (Germany), Brightsource Industries (Israel), Ltd., Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) (France), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (Japan). Data representing the share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of patents by problems, IPC sections, patent offices is provided in the form of tables and diagrams for them.
The prominent documents pages contain the top 10 patents with the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage 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 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 solar energy production technologies.
