Archive
WIND ENERGY. Latest granted patents 2016-2018. Control and power production units
Summary
Wind energy is developing very rapidly throughout the world and is enabling a number of countries to increase energy autonomy and reduce CO2 emissions, in accordance with the Paris Agreements. High efficiency and stable operation of the wind farm is the key to the successful application of this technology and its further development. Today, there are a number of factors that can reduce the efficiency of a wind power plant, which include incorrect positioning relative to wind direction, icing, fatigue stress, as well as extra strong gusts of wind, for example during a storm, requiring a complete shutdown of the turbine, etc. Thus, technologies that allow monitoring and control of power production have become essential in the field of further development of wind energy. Yaw systems, anemometers and pitch systems can not only increase the efficiency of a wind turbine, but also control the production of electricity depending on demand. Timely and detailed information on the latest patent developments in the field of control and power production allows you to track technological trends and their specifics.
A selection of patents related to the subject of control and power production units 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 2136 patents, prepared by applicants from 29 countries and registered in 25 patent offices. The patent documents mention 568 applicants and 918 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.
The following information can be found for the top 10 applicants: breakdown of patents 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: Wobben Properties GmbH (Germany), Vestas Wind Systems A/S (Denmark), General Electric (USA), Siemens AG (Germany), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (Japan), Senvion Deutschland GmbH (Germany), Hitachi, Ltd. (Japan), Gamesa Innovation & Technology S.L. (Spain), Wobben Aloys (Germany), Beijing Goldwind Science & Creation Windpower Equipment Co Ltd (China).
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 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 wind energy production technologies.
