WIND ENERGY. Blades and components thereof. Patent Database. Aenert. May 2021
Summary
Wind power is a major direction of renewable energy development. Nowadays, large and small wind farms can be encountered in almost any country of the world. Modern wind turbines are complex technical devices equipped with a broad range of monitoring and control systems, as well as with specialized tools for technical diagnostics and repair. This allows wind turbines to be operated in diverse environmental conditions, including offshore areas.
Blades are among the most critical and vulnerable components of wind turbine design that convert the kinetic power of wind into the rotational energy of generator. Wind turbine blades take most of the external load, which often has extreme characteristics, including powerful wind gusts, lightning strikes, moisture penetration, and icing. On the other hand, the blades must ensure wind turbine operation even at low wind. The most advanced wind turbines have blades that greatly exceed a hundred meters in length and weigh several thousand kilograms. This substantially complicates their mounting, replacement, diagnostics, and transportation. The blades are made of polymer composites reinforced with various types of high-strength fibers, most often fiberglass. This provides an acceptable combination of performance and cost in wind turbine blades.
Nevertheless, wind energy industry faces many technical and organizational problems that hinder its development. For blades, increasing their reliability, reducing weight, ensuring large-scale production, and improving operational characteristics are of the highest priority.
The present database includes a collection of patents and patent applications disclosing original technical solutions in this sector of modern energy industry.
Key Highlights
The database contains 11907 patent documents registered in patent offices around the world since 1995 that were published in publicly-available patent databases, found in the result of a deliberate patent search, and processed in accordance with the methodology by the date of compilation of this database (May 2021).
The database also includes statistical analysis for major parameters of patent documents published during the 20-year period between 2001-2020.
A free demo version of this database can be downloaded here:
WIND ENERGY
Blades and components thereof
PATENT DATABASE · Free Demo Version May 2021
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The demo version presents the first hundred patent documents, as well as some of the statistical information. In most cases, statistical diagrams and tables are limited to the first positions, the rest are hidden by symbols ###. In the full version the statistical information is presented in full and the diagrams are calculated automatically.
Each patent document in this database contains a list of conventional bibliographical indicators, including original title, English version of title, family size, application date, publication date, patenting office, names of inventors and applicants, document kind (patent or application), number of claims, number of citing, IPC indices, and core document number.
Also, all documents are provided with additional markers – unified indicators that include: technology categories (indicate the applicability of technical solutions to one of the energy industry sectors, as stated by the authors of the inventions); technology elements (indicators with a specific level of detailing for the production process in a particular energy industry sector); problems (technical, economical, ecological and other problems declared by the authors in a patent document); type of technical solution (device, method, composition).
The database contains a number of derived indicators, including applicant statuses, residence of applicants, Unified Indicator Group. Indicators such as patent pending period, prominent patents, applicant's share in the aggregate intellectual property register can be calculated based on the available data.
Additional marking of patent documents represented in the database makes it possible to form exclusive lists of patent documents having any remarkable characteristics, such as top prominent documents by rating, top prominent documents by number of IPC sections, top prominent single applications, etc.
For the majority of patents and applications rating points are calculated based on the aggregate of bibliographical and unified indicators and the resulting values are shown in the database.
The aforementioned indicators make it possible to: perform a refined search of patent documents located in the database; form group combinations of documents based on specific criteria; quickly visualize collected data by simple operations supported by professional tables. This is also promoted by additionally provided search options – by keywords in patent document titles (Keyword) or by using a full list of IPC indicators assigned to patent family documents (Family IPC pool). To ensure convenience of operations with the database it is also provided with such additional features as Glossary, Overview, Filter Manual, and Explanatory Remarks.
The database also includes a brief statistical analysis of major parameters of patent documents published between 2002 and 2021, represented in the form of diagrams and tables, or lists of patents and applications composed based on selected parameters. The statistical results provided are acquired exclusively using the database under consideration and illustrate its capabilities.
Statistical analysis includes:
Inventions: 11869
Offices: 50
Countries: 32
Applicants: 1500
Individual IPC subgroups: 1503
Total IPC subgroups assigned: 28193
In particular, the statistical analysis includes a breakdown of documents by publication dates, by patent families, by patent offices, by residents and non-residents, and by applicant countries.
The main body of the patent documents were registered between 2015 and 2019 with a peak of patenting activity in 2015. With rare exceptions, USPTO (US) and EPO patent offices annually were the leaders by the number of granted patents. However, in the last years maximum number of patent applications were registered in CNIPA (CN).
The highest activity in patenting their inventions was demonstrated by the residents of Germany and Denmark. Among other countries whose residents were granted at least one hundred patents were the United States, China, Japan, and Spain.
The most popular IPC subgroup with a share more than 24% was F03D1/06 – Wind motors with rotation axis substantially parallel to the air flow entering the rotor/Rotors. Device as a type of technical solution was mentioned in around 61% of patented inventions; different methods were mentioned considerably less often – in almost 38%.
More than 470 groups of identical unified indicators were identified among patents. The most numerous of them was a group with a combination of indicators HWT/B/LEKM/D, where HWT is "Horizontal axis wind turbine in general" technology category; B is "Blades and components thereof" technology element; LEKM – "Low kinetic-to-mechanical power conversion efficiency" problem, D – "Device" technical solution type. Wobben Aloys (DE) and General Electric (US) had the largest number of inventions in this group. The following problems at which the technical solutions were aimed were mentioned more than others by the authors in their inventions: High OPEX / Repair and replacement and High CAPEX / Equipment production.
A separate portion of the statistical analysis is dedicated to applicants of patent documents. It includes the lists of applicants separately for patents and applications, breakdown of applicants' patent documents by offices, by types of technical solution, by problems, by technology categories, by IPC sections.
The list of top 10 most productive applicants by the number of patents includes:
General Electric (US)
Vestas Wind Systems A/S (DK)
WOBBEN PROPERTIES GMBH (DE)
Siemens AG (DE)
Wobben Aloys (DE)
LM WP Patent Holding A/S (DK)
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (JP)
Senvion Deutschland GmbH (DE)
Lm Glasfiber A/S (DK)
Gamesa Innovation & Technology S.L. (ES)
The concluding part of the analysis includes calculated data that allow the resulting patenting trends to be exposed and main conclusions to be drawn. Such diagrams as relationship of number of applicants to number of patents by year, relationship of number of single applications to total number by year, new applicants by year, top new IPC subgroups, and others, are presented here.
Detailed information on the methodology of search and processing of patent documents is available on the Advanced Energy Technologies website (www.aenert.com).
Who needs this Database?
This Database 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 Database can be of interest for inventors, engineers, researchers, students and educators, 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.
Disclaimer
The present database was prepared by EnerTechUp company and its partners. The database includes patent documents that were carefully collected from the publicly available sources and, according to the authors, to the greatest degree represent the latest innovations in the particular energy industry as of the date of the database preparation. Detailed information on the methodology of search and processing of patent documents is available at Advanced Energy Technologies website. Considering the difficulties related to the compilation of lists of international patent documents, including those related to time frames, national and terminological barriers, as well as taking into consideration high labour intensity of collecting the required analytical information and performing its qualitative interpretation, the authors of the database cannot guarantee absolute completeness and accuracy of the represented materials and disclaim any responsibility for the use thereof. EnerTechUp company represents this material “as is” and rejects any claims and liabilities arising from the use of data published therein, including, but not limited to: compensation for any type of financial damage, lost profit or compensation for moral injury. These stipulations also refer to employees, shareholders, agents and data suppliers of EnerTechUp company.
