Archive
WIND ENERGY. Latest granted patents 2016-2018. Maintenance, repair and replacement
Summary
The leading trends in the development of wind energy are the increase in the size of wind turbines and the rapid construction of wind farms in offshore zones, which allows to achieve maximum capacity factor. Thus, one of the largest offshore wind turbines - Haliade-X, developed by General Electric, will have a tower height of over 260 meters and a rotor diameter of 220 meters. However, the maintenance of wind farms with such large structures, especially in marine areas, is a difficult technical task. The full implementation of technological solutions and the efficiency of power generation depend on its optimal design. In this regard, issues related to the components of wind turbine equipment are very popular among the inventors.
A selection of patents related to the maintenance, repair and replacement of wind turbines 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 Advanced Energy Technologies website. The present bulletin includes 867 patents, prepared by applicants from 21 countries and registered in 25 patent offices. The patent documents mention 290 applicants and 568 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).
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 Wobben Properties GmbH (Germany), Vestas Wind Systems A/S (Denmark), Siemens AG (Denmark), General Electric (USA), Senvion Deutschland GmbH (Germany), Areva Wind Gmbh (Germany), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (Japan), Gamesa Innovation & Technology S.L. (Spain), Samsung Heavy Industries Co., Ltd (South Korea), Beijing Goldwind Science & Creation Windpower Equipment Co Ltd (China). Data representing the share in the established intellectual property market, distribution of documents by problems, IPC sections, patent offices and technology indicators 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 wind energy production technologies.
