CAES Grid-Scale Storage Patent Landscape 2026
The compressed-air energy storage landscape is concentrated among a small set of specialized and industrial-equipment filers, with LightSail Energy and Dresser-Rand holding the two largest positions. Activity has plateaued near its 2017 peak on a multi-year basis, leaving grid-integration and fluid-systems branches relatively open to new entrants.
LightSail Energy leads a concentrated but commercially mixed field
LightSail Energy holds the top position with 40 patent records, followed closely by Dresser-Rand with 38 and General Electric with 33, establishing a tight three-way lead group at the head of the ranking.
The top five filers — LightSail Energy, Dresser-Rand, General Electric, Kobe Steel, and Energy Compression — together account for 39% of the hundred largest filers’ combined total, signalling meaningful but not dominant concentration; challengers in ranks six through ten hold positions close enough to compete on specific technology routes.
| # | Applicant | Patent records | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | LightSail Energy Inc | 40 | |
| 2 | Dresser-Rand Co | 38 | |
| 3 | General Electric Co | 33 | |
| 4 | Kobe Steel Ltd | 29 | |
| 5 | Energy Compression Inc | 20 | |
| 6 | Electric Power Research Institute Inc | 16 | |
| 7 | GLOBAL POWER & ENERGY | 16 | |
| 8 | Energy Technologies Institute | 14 | |
| 9 | General Electric Technology GmbH | 9 | |
| 10 | Nuovo Pignone S.p.A. | 9 |
| # | Applicant | Patent records | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Hydrostor Inc | 8 | |
| 12 | Nuovo Pignone Tecnologie S.r.l. | 8 | |
| 13 | Storage Drop Ltd | 7 | |
| 14 | Sebastian W. Freund | 7 | |
| 15 | Siemens Energy Inc | 6 | |
| 16 | Alstom Technology Ltd | 5 | |
| 17 | German Aerospace Center (DLR) | 5 | |
| 18 | Toyo Engineering Corporation | 5 | |
| 19 | J. Ray McDermott S.A. | 5 | |
| 20 | Olalekan A. Alao | 5 |
The leading positions are held by a mix of venture-backed specialists (LightSail Energy, Energy Compression) and large industrial-equipment OEMs (Dresser-Rand, General Electric, Kobe Steel), which indicates the field attracts both dedicated CAES developers and turbomachinery incumbents protecting adjacent turf.
Filing counts for 2024 and 2025 should be treated as provisional; patent applications typically take 18–24 months to publish, so recent-year totals will rise as the backlog clears. Longer-window growth, applicant concentration, and technology-route coverage are therefore more reliable signals than the latest-year bar alone.
Filing activity plateaued after 2017; gas-turbine IP dominates the technology mix
The annual trend chart reveals the field’s maturity trajectory, while the IPC composition chart shows where technical effort has been concentrated and where adjacent branches remain sparse.
Annual filing trend
Filings peaked in 2017 at 27 records and have since oscillated at lower levels, with a secondary uptick to 19 in 2021 before settling near 10–15 in subsequent years. The 2025 and 2026 bars are almost certainly undercounted due to publication lag and should not be read as a further decline.
↗ Hover for values · click a bar to ask EurekaTechnology composition
F02C (Gas-turbine plants) dominates the IPC mix by a wide margin, reflecting that most CAES systems route compressed air through combustion-turbine or expander cycles. F01K (Steam and thermal power plants) and H02J (Power supply and grid systems) are the next largest branches, but their counts are a fraction of F02C’s, indicating that grid-integration and thermal-cycle control IP is comparatively underdeveloped relative to the core compression-expansion machinery.
↗ Hover for values · click a bar to ask EurekaHighly cited patent families surfaced by the query
Citation-heavy patent families returned by the query. Use this section as citation context, not as a curated list of the most topic-specific patents.
System and method for secondary energy production …
A method, system, and apparatus including a compressed air energy storage (CAES) system including a compression train with a compressor path, a storage volume configured to store compressed air, a compressed air path configured to provide passage of compressed air egressing from the compression train to the storage volume, and a heat recovery system coupled… (excerpt from the patent abstract)
| # | Patent | Citations |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Power plant utilizing compressed air energy storag… | 500 |
| 2 | Compressed air energy storage method and system | 486 |
| 3 | Compressed air energy storage turbomachinery cycle… | 219 |
| 4 | Adiabatic compressed air energy storage system wit… | 206 |
| 5 | Retrofit of simple cycle gas turbines for compress… | 185 |
| 6 | Combination of supercritical wet combustion and co… | 157 |
| 7 | Power plant utilizing compressed air energy storag… | 153 |
| 8 | Compressed gas system and method | 148 |
Ranked by total forward citations. Citation counts favour older and broadly cited patent families, and broad or adjacent patents may appear when they match the search scope. Treat this section as citation context, not as a curated list of the most topic-specific patents. Some patent titles may be shown in their original, non-English language where an accurate translation could not be guaranteed.
What the patent structure means for R&D investment decisions
The combination of a maturing filing trend, turbomachinery-heavy IP, and modest collaboration activity points to a field where the core compression-expansion cycle is well-covered and differentiation is shifting toward system integration and ancillary subsystems.
Field has plateaued near its 2017 peak
The lifecycle stage is Maturity: annual filings have plateaued near their peak and the multi-year window shows only modest positive growth of 20%. Foundational turbomachinery and compression-cycle patents are densely filed, reducing freedom to operate in those sub-areas. New entrants should assess whether adjacent, less-crowded branches offer more defensible positions.
Lifecycle: MaturityTop five hold 39% of the leading-filer total
The top five applicants account for 39% of the hundred largest filers’ combined patent records, a moderate concentration level. The gap between rank one (40 records) and rank five (20 records) is meaningful but not prohibitive, meaning a challenger investing consistently could realistically close it. Ranks six through ten cluster between 14 and 16 records, indicating a competitive second tier.
Moderate concentrationLimited co-filing; Nuovo Pignone entities are the most active pair
Observed co-filing activity is sparse. The most active pairing is Nuovo Pignone S.p.A. and Nuovo Pignone Tecnologie S.r.l. (2 joint records), both General Electric subsidiaries, reflecting intra-corporate collaboration rather than cross-company partnerships. General Electric also co-filed once each with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and RWE Power AG, the only cross-organization collaborations on record.
Low collaboration densityUS-centric filing with meaningful EPO and PCT reach
The United States leads all jurisdictions with 104 patent records, followed by Europe (EPO) at 83 and WIPO (PCT) at 56, indicating that leading applicants pursue broad transatlantic protection. Canada, China, the UK, Australia, and Japan each carry double-digit counts, pointing to secondary commercial interest in those markets. Emerging-market jurisdictions such as India (15), Israel (9), and South Korea (9) are present but secondary.
US-led, global reachGo beyond the landscape: Eureka’s TRIZ Solution agent breaks down an R&D problem and returns patented concept solutions, each with a technical approach and cited patent & literature evidence.
| Applicant | Collaborator | Co-filings |
|---|---|---|
| Nuovo Pignone S.p.A. | Nuovo Pignone Tecnologie S.r.l. | 2 |
| General Electric Co | German Aerospace Center (DLR) | 1 |
| General Electric Co | RWE Power AG | 1 |
Co-filing pairs, ranked by the number of jointly-filed patent families.
LightSail Energy and General Electric define opposite ends of the technology spectrum
The top filers split between dedicated CAES developers focused on fluid-pressure and reciprocating-machine innovations and turbomachinery OEMs anchoring their positions in gas-turbine cycle IP.
LightSail Energy Inc
LightSail Energy holds 40 patent records — the largest position in the corpus — with technical emphasis concentrated in fluid-pressure actuators and systems (F15B), gas-turbine plants (F02C), and reciprocating machines (F01B). This combination signals a near-isothermal or liquid-spray compression approach that differentiates LightSail from the gas-turbine-centric incumbents. No momentum data is available for recent filing trajectory.
patent records: 40General Electric Co
General Electric ranks third overall with 33 patent records and holds the most concentrated gas-turbine cycle portfolio of any single applicant, with all three top IPC focus areas falling within F02C (Gas-turbine plants). Its collaboration records with DLR and RWE Power indicate an interest in utility-scale integration. The affiliated entity General Electric Technology GmbH adds 9 further patent records, and Nuovo Pignone S.p.A. and Nuovo Pignone Tecnologie S.r.l. (GE subsidiaries) contribute 9 and 8 records respectively, making GE’s combined group footprint the largest in the field. No momentum data is available for recent filing trajectory.
patent records: 33Grid-integration and fluid-systems branches are under-served relative to the core turbine cycle
F02C dominates the IPC mix, leaving several adjacent branches with comparatively low filing density. These observations reflect relative sparsity in the current corpus; whether they represent actionable entry points depends on each team’s technical roadmap and freedom-to-operate assessment.
H02J · Power supply and grid systems
H02J carries 77 patent records — roughly 23% of F02C’s count — despite grid-interface control being a critical enabler of commercial CAES deployment for frequency regulation and renewable firming. Kobe Steel is the only top-five applicant with a notable H02J focus (17 records at the H02J15 sub-class), leaving the broader grid-systems space thinly covered. Teams with power-electronics or grid-control expertise could develop defensible IP here with relatively limited prior-art density.
Search this in Eureka →F15B · Fluid-pressure actuators and systems
F15B has 65 patent records in the corpus and its filing density is driven largely by LightSail Energy’s liquid-spray compression approach. Outside LightSail’s portfolio, this branch is sparsely populated, suggesting that alternative near-isothermal compression techniques — such as hydraulic or pneumatic displacement methods — have attracted limited dedicated IP. Given the thermodynamic efficiency gains on offer, this sub-area has plausible technical value for developers pursuing adiabatic or advanced-adiabatic CAES architectures.
Search this in Eureka →How leading applicants differ across gas-turbine, fluid-pressure, and grid-systems routes
Route coverage across the main technology branches in the current evidence set.
| Player | F02C 6 · Gas-turbine plants | F02C 1 · Gas-turbine plants | F02C 7 · Gas-turbine plants | H02J 15 · Power supply & grid systems | F15B 1 · Fluid-pressure actuators & systems |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kobe Steel Ltd | Strong · 26 | Strong · 18 | Moderate · 8 | Strong · 17 | Absent |
| General Electric Co | Strong · 30 | Strong · 17 | Moderate · 9 | Emerging · 5 | Absent |
| Dresser-Rand Co | Strong · 29 | Moderate · 6 | Strong · 18 | Absent | Absent |
| Energy Compression Inc | Strong · 19 | Strong · 15 | Strong · 16 | Absent | Absent |
| LightSail Energy Inc | Strong · 14 | Strong · 13 | Absent | Moderate · 4 | Strong · 19 |
| Electric Power Research Institute Inc | Strong · 16 | Absent | Moderate · 4 | Absent | Absent |
| Global Power & Energy | Strong · 16 | Absent | Absent | Absent | Moderate · 4 |
Frequently asked questions
The corpus contains 109 patent families in scope. The United States is the lead filing office with 104 patent records, followed by Europe (EPO) at 83 and WIPO (PCT) at 56.
LightSail Energy Inc holds the largest position with 40 patent records, followed by Dresser-Rand Co with 38 and General Electric Co with 33. If GE-affiliated entities (General Electric Technology GmbH, Nuovo Pignone S.p.A., and Nuovo Pignone Tecnologie S.r.l.) are combined, GE’s group footprint is the largest in the field.
F02C (Gas-turbine plants) is the dominant IPC class by a wide margin. The next-largest classes are F01K (Steam and thermal power plants) and H02J (Power supply and grid systems), both of which are substantially smaller than F02C.
The field is in a Maturity stage. Annual filings peaked in 2017 at 27 records and have since plateaued at lower levels, with a secondary uptick in 2021. The multi-year window shows positive growth of 20%, but annual volume has eased from the 2017 peak. The 2024 and 2025 counts should be treated as provisional due to publication lag.
The United States (104 patent records) is the primary filing jurisdiction, with Europe (EPO) at 83 and WIPO (PCT) at 56 representing the next tier. Canada, China, the UK, Australia, and Japan each carry double-digit record counts, reflecting meaningful secondary protection strategies.
H02J (Power supply and grid systems) and F15B (Fluid-pressure actuators and systems) are the largest branches outside the dominant F02C class but remain comparatively sparse. F04B (Positive-displacement pumps) and F03B (Hydraulic machines and engines) are also under-represented relative to the core gas-turbine cycle IP, and may warrant review by teams working on alternative compression architectures.
Ready to map your own CAES landscape?
Join 18,000+ innovators using PatSnap Eureka to map any technology landscape: search 2B+ patents and papers, surface key assignees, and generate a report like this in minutes.
Disclaimer. This page is generated from PatSnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. PatSnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.