Aggregated Flexible Load Patents: Leaders & Filing Trends 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (3 records) with 2024 (17) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 194 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks 194 published patent families matching aggregated flexible load terminology across demand response and grid-flexibility filings from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off. The search string captures records that explicitly claim aggregation of flexible loads, distinguishing this set from broader smart-grid or general demand-response filings that do not address load aggregation directly. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so figures for 2025 and 2026 will keep rising as more records publish.
Records here span grid operators, industrial software vendors, university labs and a scatter of single-filing entrants, with receiving-office activity concentrated in China, the United States and PCT filings via WIPO. The technology composition splits across business-logic classes, digital data processing and power-grid hardware classes, reflecting a field where optimisation algorithms and market mechanisms are claimed at least as often as physical grid equipment.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 194-record set: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim volume.
Filing trend: steep growth through 2024, publication lag beyond
Annual filings rose from 10 in 2017 to a documented peak of 30 in 2025, with the sharpest documented rise between 2021 (3 records) and 2024 (17 records) — a 467% increase over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures will continue to revise upward as later publications land, so treat the most recent two years as a floor, not a ceiling.
Technology composition: business logic leads, grid hardware follows
G06Q (business, commerce & admin data processing) appears in 43.8% of the 194 records in scope, ahead of G06F electric digital data processing at 33.0% and H02J power supply & grid systems at 24.2%. AI-model computing under G06N reaches 14.9%, indicating a meaningful but still secondary share of filings explicitly claim machine-learning methods for load aggregation. Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares sum to more than 100% and should be read against the 194-record total, not against each other.
Shares are the percentage of the 194 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Demand Response & Flexible Loads: Aggregated Flexible Load Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
Method and system for providing flexible reserve power for power grid
An optimization-based method and system enabling heterogeneous loads and distributed energy resources to participate in grid ancillary services such as spinning, non-spinning and ramping reserves. The system receives decision parameters, solves an objective function for flexible reserve power, determines a reserve power schedule over a prediction horizon, generates a service bid from that schedule, and dispatches flexible reserve power once the bid is accepted.Filed by GE Digital Holdings, published 2019-01-31 — illustrates how aggregated flexible load claims frame load and DER dispatch as an optimisation-and-bidding problem rather than a hardware control problem.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US3341394A | Sheets of randomly distributed continuous filaments | 3,213 |
| 2 | US20170235848A1 | System and method for fuzzy concept mapping, voting ontology crowd sourcing, and technology prediction | 1,473 |
| 3 | US20020120555A1 | System and method for physicals commodity trading | 277 |
| 4 | US11080336B2 | System and method for fuzzy concept mapping, voting ontology crowd sourcing, and technology prediction | 225 |
| 5 | US20040004119A1 | Systems and methods for package sortation and delivery using radio frequency identification technology | 147 |
| 6 | US20170032016A1 | Real-time information systems and methodology based on continuous homomorphic processing in linear informatio… | 110 |
| 7 | US6430565B1 | Path compression for records of multidimensional database | 61 |
| 8 | US20140277808A1 | Use of Demand Response (DR) and Distributed Energy Resources (DER) to mitigate the impact of Variable Energy … | 54 |
| 9 | US20200167694A1 | Automated feature engineering of hierarchical ensemble connectomes | 51 |
| 10 | US20050040290A1 | Inflatable parachute for very low altitude jumping and method for delivering same to a person in need | 47 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and favour older filings; they are not a measure of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three findings that shape where to file, who to watch, and which claim space is still open.
Leadership is real but thin
The ranked leader holds 10 records and fifth place holds 6, yet the top 5 combined account for only 19.6% of all 194 records in scope. Even the top 10 combined reach just 29.9%. This is not a field locked up by two or three dominant filers — it is a long tail of grid operators, software vendors and single-filing entrants competing for the remaining claim space.
The field accelerated sharply, then hit the publication lag
Filings rose from 3 in 2021 to 17 in 2024, a 467% increase that marks aggregated flexible load moving from experimental filings into mainstream grid-flexibility strategy. 2025's documented count of 30 suggests continued momentum, but figures for 2025 and 2026 will keep revising upward as later publications land.
The contest is over optimisation logic, not switchgear
G06Q business-and-admin data processing appears in 43.8% of the 194 records, well ahead of H02J power-grid systems at 24.2%. Filers are claiming how loads get aggregated, priced and dispatched — the market and optimisation layer — more often than they are claiming new grid hardware.
Filing activity splits between China, the US and PCT routes
China and the United States each host roughly a quarter of receiving-office activity (46 and 45 filings respectively), with WIPO PCT filings at 26 indicating a meaningful share of applicants are pursuing multi-jurisdiction protection rather than filing domestically only. India, Europe and Australia round out the remaining volume.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to demand response & flexible loads: aggregated flexible load patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis
The figures above describe the field as filed. Turning them into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means running the same questions against your own claim set.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leaders
With no single assignee controlling more than a small share of records, a new filing is more likely to collide with a scattered prior-art landscape than with one blocking patent — map the specific claims near your intended filing, not just the top assignees.
Explore Eureka's claim analysis →Watch the 2025–2026 publication window
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the strongest recent signal on where competitors are heading will only become visible over the next reporting cycles. Re-run this landscape periodically rather than treating the current cut-off as final.
Set up monitoring in Eureka →Separate business-logic claims from hardware claims
With G06Q claims nearly double H02J claims, a filing strategy that treats this as a grid-hardware field will miss most of the active claim space. Decide early whether you are competing on optimisation algorithms, market mechanisms, or physical grid equipment.
Run a technology breakdown in Eureka →Common questions about aggregated flexible load patents
The ranked leader in this dataset holds 10 of the 194 records in scope, with the field dropping off quickly after that — fifth place holds 6 records and tenth place holds 4. The top 5 assignees combined account for only 19.6% of all records, and the top 10 combined reach 29.9%, so no single company dominates. This is a field with a long tail of grid operators, software vendors and universities each holding a handful of filings rather than one or two companies controlling the space.
Filings grew sharply between 2021 and 2024, rising from 3 records to 17 records — a 467% increase over that three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year that can be treated as a complete count; 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. Treat any apparent slowdown in the latest one or two years as a data artefact, not a real decline in filing activity.
The largest concentration sits in G06Q, business and administrative data processing, covering 43.8% of the 194 records — this reflects optimisation, market and bidding logic for aggregating loads. G06F electric digital data processing follows at 33.0%, and H02J power supply and grid systems, the more hardware-oriented class, sits at 24.2%. AI-model computing under G06N appears in 14.9% of records, showing machine-learning methods are a real but secondary claim focus. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these percentages add up to more than 100% and should each be read against the full 194-record total.
China and the United States are the two largest receiving offices, with 46 and 45 filings respectively, closely matched rather than one dominating. WIPO PCT filings total 26, showing a meaningful share of applicants are seeking multi-jurisdiction protection rather than filing in a single country. India, Europe (EPO) and Australia follow with smaller but still notable volumes, indicating the technology is being protected across multiple major markets rather than concentrated in one region.
Yes — the concentration figures suggest it. With the top 10 ranked assignees holding only 29.9% of the 194 records in scope, and hardware-oriented H02J claims trailing business-logic G06Q claims by nearly twenty percentage points, there is room to claim grid-hardware implementations, AI-model-specific methods beyond the 14.9% already claimed under G06N, and cross-border aggregation mechanisms that are not yet heavily contested. A freedom-to-operate review focused on the specific claims near your intended filing, rather than on the leading assignees alone, is the more reliable way to confirm open space.
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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.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.