WIND ENERGY. Latest published applications 2017-2019. Blades and components thereof
Summary
Wind energy is a rapidly developing area of modern energy industry, which plays an increasingly important role in the global energy supply. According to IRENA, as of the end of 2019, the volume of installed wind capacity in the world exceeded 600 GW, and electricity generation was at the level of 1.27 TW/h, i.e. about 5% of the world's total. In some countries, wind energy is of key importance, for example in Denmark, where the share of wind energy in electricity generation approaches 50%. In addition, wind energy is by far the leader among renewable energy technologies. The stable operation of a wind turbine largely depends on the reliability and robustness of the blades, their effective diagnostics and timely maintenance. Considering that most wind farms are located in hard-to-reach areas, and the blades of modern wind turbines are up to several tens of meters long, their transportation, installation, replacement or repair are complicated technological operations that require the most modern tools and techniques. The analysis of recent patent applications on this topic presented in this newsletter, as an integral part of information on the latest innovations, can be useful to both the engineering community and investors.
The present bulletin reviews patent applications granted by patent offices around the globe in 2017-2019 in the field related to wind farm blades and components thereof. General research methodology can be found on the Advanced Energy Technologies website. 2257 patent documents from 26 patent offices around the world are represented in the bulletin. In total, 416 applicants from 29 countries and 663 subgroups of the International Patent Classification are mentioned.
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 patent applications 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 Wobben Properties GmbH (Germany), Vestas Wind Systems A/S (Denmark), General Electric (the USA), LM WP Patent Holding A/S (Denmark), Lm Wind Power International Tech II Aps (Denmark), Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy A/S (Denmark), Siemens AG (Germany), Senvion Deutschland GmbH (Germany), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (Japan), 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 is provided in the form of tables and diagrams for them.
The prominent documents pages contain the top 10 patent applications with the highest bibliographical rating, the most extensive coverage of IPC sections, and top prominent single applications.
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 power.
