An Innovation Analysis of Smart Grid Patent Landscape in the Industrial Sector

The advent of smart grid technologies represents a pivotal transformation in the energy industry, addressing the growing need for efficient energy management and sustainability. This paper investigates the landscape of patent innovations and identifies the prevailing trends in smart grid technologies within the industrial sector globally. The thorough examination of smart grid patent innovation, including ownership patterns, regional concentrations, and technological emphases, is unprecedented. Our objective was to elucidate the innovation patent landscape and the main trends in smart grid topic patents in the industry worldwide, employing an analysis of patent landscapes as our primary research method. Utilizing data from Lens.org, we analyzed a dataset encompassing the period from 2004 to 2023, which includes 14,897 patent documents and 6,207 simple family patents. Our findings reveal a significant dominance of corporate ownership over individual inventors in the smart grid sector, with a notable concentration of patents originating from South Korea and the United States. The results of the patents are predominantly classified under the physics (G) and electricity (H) sections, indicating a strong focus on the technical and electrical aspects of smart grid technologies. The largest group of patents is dominated by group H04W72/23 (n=1,809) related to wireless communication networks, e.g. wireless extensions from 14 countries. South Korea is the top inventor in the smart grid field and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, South Korea (n=1,777) became the top owner.