Archive
WIND ENERGY. Latest published applications 2015-2017. Bearing and housing structures
Summary
Wind power, along with photovoltaics, occupies an increasingly significant position in the global energy balance. Continuous improvement of wind turbine production technologies and their operation modes and the use of the latest materials; electronics, more sensitive to changes in wind flows and built-in monitoring systems can not only increase the capacity factor, but also generate energy even in regions with low wind speeds. Uninterrupted operation of wind farms largely depends on the quality of structural elements and bearing structures of wind turbines. As such, leading players in the production market, such as Vestas, Siemens, General Electric and others pay considerable attention to optimizing the design of the tower and aerodynamic shells, including gondolas and other elements (tower, Aerodynamic casings, nacelle, shrouds), both in terms of increasing their operational characteristics and reducing the cost of production and installation. The recent engineering developments in the form of patent applications related to bearing and housing structures of the wind turbines collected in this patent bulletin will help to monitor current trends and identify leaders in this area.
A selection of patent applications related to bearing and housing structures of wind farms and published by patent offices around the globe in 2015-2017 is provided for review in the present bulletin. General research methodology can be found at the Advanced Energy Technologies website. The present bulletin includes 1372 patent applications, prepared by applicants from 24 countries and registered in 33 patent offices. The patent documents mention 351 applicants and 456 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 registered the largest number of patent applications were CNIPA (CN), USPTO (US) and EPO.
From the analysis of texts of patent applications 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 patent applications 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 documents by problems, IPC sections, patent offices and technology indicators. Representatives of Germany prevail among the patenting leaders in the examined period of time. These leaders include: Wobben Properties GmbH (Germany), Vestas Wind Systems A/S (Denmark), Siemens AG (Germany), University of Maine (the USA), General Electric (the USA), MHI Vestas Offshore Wind A/S (Denmark), ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe AG (Germany), Acciona Windpower S.A. (Spain), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (Japan), Youwinenergy Gmbh (Germany).
The bulletin contains lists of the top 10 prominent documents having the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, and those not being part a of patent family.
A list 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 registered patent applications are provided in the conclusive part of the bulletin.
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.
