Microgrid Control Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing peaked in 2017 at 23 records and has not returned to that level since the midpoint year, 2022, sits at just 7 — this is a field that front-loaded its claims rather than one still accelerating.
- China and the United States dominate filing venues 37 records at CNIPA and 27 at USPTO versus 16 at EPO, 12 in India and 6 via PCT — a strong signal on where enforcement actually matters.
- No tracked assignee filed anything in the latest full year every leading name in the ranking, from ABB to Hitachi to Siemens, shows zero recent-year momentum, which changes how you should read the ranking table below.
What this search covers
This landscape draws on 81 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine microgrid control or distributed energy resource control with a specific technical mechanism: droop control, seamless transition, black start, virtual synchronous generator behaviour, or energy dispatch, filed under the H02J power-supply-and-grid family alongside protective and conversion subclasses. It is a narrow, mechanism-specific slice of the broader microgrid literature, not a count of every filing that merely mentions a microgrid.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in the trend line are necessarily incomplete and should not be read as a real drop-off in activity — only the years through roughly 2023 give a reliable picture of filer behaviour.
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Trend and technology composition
The filing curve and the IPC spread together show a field that built its core claim positions early and has since spread laterally into control theory and AI-assisted dispatch rather than deepening the original power-electronics claims.
A front-loaded filing curve
Filings ran hot from 2015 through the 2017 peak of 23 records, then declined toward a flat midpoint of 7 in 2022. Read the final two years as undercounted rather than as a genuine contraction, given publication lag.
Concentration in H02J, with control and AI on the fringe
H02J (power supply and grid systems) accounts for the large majority of tagged records, with G05B and G05F control-systems classes and a smaller G06N (AI-based computing) presence suggesting dispatch logic is increasingly framed as a control-and-learning problem rather than a pure power-electronics one.
Shares are the percentage of 149 class assignments (one record can carry several), not of the record count.
Go deeper on Microgrid Control and Islanding with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about microgrid control and islanding and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe records other filers had to design around
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CN102623992A | 基于旋转坐标虚拟阻抗的孤岛微电网控制及优化方法 | 90 |
| 2 | US20190341781A1 | Control system for microgrids for the production and distribution of electric power coming from multiple prod… | 51 |
| 3 | CN111541274A | 一种基于虚拟同步发电机特性的孤岛微电网控制策略 | 49 |
| 4 | US20200287410A1 | Microgrid control system and microgrid | 38 |
| 5 | CN109494746A | 基于改进自适应下垂控制的孤岛交直流混联微电网潮流计算方法 | 37 |
| 6 | WO2018122726A1 | Control system for microgrids for the production and distribution of electric power coming from multiple prod… | 37 |
| 7 | US20190207391A1 | Dynamic active and reactive power load sharing in an islanded microgrid | 37 |
| 8 | US20140252855A1 | Microgrid control system | 29 |
| 9 | US20160156190A1 | Hierarchical Control of Micro-grids | 23 |
| 10 | CN107706939A | CPS概念下的微网中考虑时滞和丢包问题的分布式控制方法 | 20 |
Citation counts are drawn from within this searched corpus and favour older filings that have had more years to accumulate citations — treat them as a measure of influence on subsequent filers, not of present-day commercial importance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the ranking and trend data are read together: an early claims land-grab, a jurisdictional split that tracks grid modernisation programmes, and a control layer that is drifting toward software.
A land-grab that already happened
The bulk of core control-mechanism claims — droop control, seamless transition, black start sequencing — were filed in the 2015-2018 window. A filing strategy built around these exact mechanisms today is entering a field with an established prior-art floor rather than an open one.
Enforcement geography is bifurcated
China and the United States together account for the large majority of filings, with Europe, India and PCT trailing well behind. A freedom-to-operate check that skips CNIPA or USPTO is checking the wrong jurisdictions for this technology.
Dispatch logic is migrating toward software claims
A small but present cluster of filings classifies energy dispatch under AI-based computing (G06N) rather than pure power-supply control. This is the seam where new claim scope is still being written, even as the underlying power-electronics mechanisms mature.
Filing is mostly solo, with one tight cluster
Co-assignment is rare across this dataset, and the strongest pairing links ABB Switzerland with its Hitachi Energy affiliates — a signature of the ABB-Hitachi Energy joint venture restructuring rather than an open industry collaboration pattern.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to microgrid control and islanding, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claims, and where they have stopped filing
The assignee ranking is dominated by large grid-equipment manufacturers and two Chinese universities, but the recent-year momentum column tells the more useful story: every one of the leading names shows zero filings in the latest full year, which is consistent with the field-wide front-loading seen in the trend data rather than any single company's retreat.
ABB and its Hitachi Energy affiliates
ABB Switzerland appears repeatedly across the co-assignee pairs with Hitachi Energy Switzerland and Hitachi Energy entities, reflecting the ABB-to-Hitachi Energy grid business transfer. Their combined historical position is strong, but current filing activity in this exact claim set has gone quiet.
Siemens and Hitachi corporate
Siemens and Hitachi's parent corporate entity both hold ranked positions but, like ABB, show no filings in the most recent tracked year — a pattern to verify against each company's non-microgrid-specific filings before concluding they have exited the space.
Chinese university research groups
Yanshan University and Chongqing University both appear as ranked assignees, typical of the pattern in Chinese grid-technology patenting where university labs file alongside or ahead of industrial partners on control-algorithm claims.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Beijing Tianchen Tongchuang Electric Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| ABB (Switzerland) Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Siemens AG | 0 | — |
| Hitachi, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| ABB Power Grids Switzerland AG | 0 | — |
| Power System Manufacturing LLC | 0 | — |
| Yanshan University | 0 | — |
| Chongqing University | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The ranking and citation tables above answer who and what; the questions below help translate that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision.
Check freedom-to-operate against the densest claims
Start with the most-cited record and work outward — a new droop-control or virtual-impedance filing needs to be checked against it before anything else in this corpus.
Run a claims comparison in EurekaMap the white space chips against your own roadmap
The under-claimed sub-areas listed above are starting points, not guarantees of clearance — verify each against live filings outside this specific search string.
Explore white space in EurekaCommon questions on microgrid control patents
Within this dataset the leading assignees are a mix of large grid-equipment manufacturers — including ABB and its Hitachi Energy affiliates, plus Siemens and Hitachi's parent entity — alongside Chinese university groups such as Yanshan University and Chongqing University. None of these leading names show any filings in the most recent full year tracked, which likely reflects the field's early filing peak rather than any single company exiting the space. Anyone doing a competitive scan should treat the ranking as a historical claims map first and confirm current activity separately.
The peak year in this dataset is 2017 at 23 records, with the midpoint year of 2022 down to 7, a pattern consistent with filers establishing core droop-control, black-start and virtual-synchronous-generator mechanisms early and then slowing as that claim space filled in. Part of the apparent decline in the most recent one to two years is a publication-lag artefact, since filings typically publish around 18 months after they are made. The genuine trend, visible through roughly 2022-2023, is still a slowdown rather than an accelerating field.
China and the United States are by far the largest receiving offices in this search, with 37 and 27 records respectively, followed by Europe at 16, India at 12 and the PCT route at 6. This split tracks the countries running the largest grid-modernisation and distributed-energy programmes, and it means a freedom-to-operate review focused only on European filings would miss most of the relevant prior art. Filers targeting India or Australia should note their comparatively thinner coverage, which may signal either lower enforcement risk or simply less mature local filing practice.
A virtual synchronous generator (VSG) claim covers control logic that makes an inverter-based power source behave like a traditional rotating generator, providing inertia and frequency support during islanding events. It recurs heavily in this dataset's most-cited records, including one of the top five citation leaders, because VSG behaviour is central to keeping an islanded microgrid stable without spinning machinery. New filings in this area should expect to be measured against dense, well-cited prior art on virtual impedance and rotating-coordinate control methods.
Based on the IPC composition and the relatively thin filing density in adjacent sub-areas, under-claimed zones include AI-assisted dispatch scheduling (only a handful of records classified under AI-based computing), black start sequencing specific to inverter-only microgrids, and multi-microgrid interconnection protocols. These sit next to the dense core of droop control and VSG claims rather than inside it. Any filing strategy aimed at this white space should still run a citation check against the most-cited core records first, since claim boundaries can overlap more than the IPC classification suggests.
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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.