PV Inverter Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- 34 families from the leading assignee vs. a 100-deep ranked field the top 5 assignees combined hold only 21.1% of all 517 records, so claim ownership is far less concentrated than the leader's count alone suggests.
- Filings grew 56% from 2021 to 2024 (25 to 39) the most recent complete years, before the 2025-2026 publication lag understates activity that has already been filed.
- H02J and H02M cover roughly half the field on their own 55.9% and 46.8% of all 517 records respectively, while photovoltaic-specific H02S sits at just 8.5% — most of the claim density is in general power conversion, not solar-specific circuitry.
Filing growth compares 2021 (25 records) with 2024 (39) — 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 517 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape draws on 517 published records matching PV inverter and balance-of-system claim language — switching frequency, power stage, current sensor, control circuit, solar irradiance and cell efficiency terms combined with PV inverter terminology. The scope spans 2015 through the 2026-08-31 data cut-off, capturing both the mature grid-tie inverter art and newer digital-twin and degradation-estimation filings. Because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, the most recent one to two years in any trend understate true filing activity rather than reflect a real slowdown.
The assignee ranking returned by the data endpoint covers 100 companies, counted by patent family — the fairer unit here since it neutralises repeat continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction duplicates. Receiving-office data shows the United States as the dominant venue, followed by Europe, India, the WIPO PCT route, Australia and Germany, which points to a field still being filed multi-jurisdictionally rather than settled into a single home market.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 517-record set: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings peaked at 43 in 2017, dipped, then climbed again — 2021 to 2024 shows +56% growth (25 to 39 records), the last span before the publication-lag window makes 2025 and 2026 look artificially thin.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
H02J (power supply and grid systems) and H02M (power conversion) each cover close to or above half of the 517 records, since most inverter claims touch both grid interconnection and conversion topology. Solar-specific H02S sits at only 8.5%, and measurement- and control-adjacent classes — G01R, G05B, H02H — each sit under 10%, marking where claim language is thinner.
Shares are the percentage of the 517 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on PV Inverters & Balance of System Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about pv inverters & balance of system patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a recent representative filing
US12530511B1 — Systems and methods for estimating component degradation in an inverter
Systems and methods are provided for estimating component degradation in photovoltaic (PV) inverters. A functional digital twin (DT) is used to accurately estimate and/or predict degradation of components of an inverter of a PV system, such as by estimating and/or predicting parameters of the components. A machine learning (ML) model is used together with the DT for the estimation/prediction of degradation of the components of the PV inverters.Filed by The Florida International University Board of Trustees, published 2026-01-20 — one of the most recent grants in scope, filed at the intersection of digital-twin modelling and inverter hardware degradation.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US7031176B2 | Inverter | 326 |
| 2 | US20100208501A1 | Power transfer management for local power sources of a grid-tied load | 316 |
| 3 | US20090121549A1 | Method and system to convert direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC) using a photovoltaic inverter | 302 |
| 4 | US20050226017A1 | Inverter | 249 |
| 5 | US7893346B2 | Integrated voltaic energy system | 243 |
| 6 | US8018748B2 | Method and system to convert direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC) using a photovoltaic inverter | 234 |
| 7 | WO2004008619A2 | inverter | 215 |
| 8 | US20100071742A1 | Quasi-AC, photovoltaic module for unfolder photovoltaic inverter | 196 |
| 9 | US20110215640A1 | Dispatchable power from a renewable energy facility | 164 |
| 10 | EP1532727A2 | inverter | 157 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside the searched corpus — read them as a signal of influence on the field, not of current filing activity.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs of the concentration, growth and classification data above, translated into what they imply for where to file and where to watch.
The field is led but not locked
A single assignee holds 34 families, well ahead of the fifth-place holder's 16, yet the top 5 combined only reach 21.1% of all 517 records in scope. That gap between one strong leader and a shallow drop-off after it means most of the claim space is held by a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants, not a cartel of incumbents.
Growth is real, not a trailing-year illusion
Filings rose from 25 in 2021 to 39 in 2024, a 56% increase across the last span of years that can be treated as complete. 2025 and 2026 both show far fewer published records, but that is the expected effect of the roughly 18-month publication lag, not a genuine pullback in filing.
Grid and conversion claims dominate, solar-specific claims don't
H02J (power supply and grid systems) and H02M (power conversion) each touch roughly half the corpus, while H02S — the subclass reserved for photovoltaic generation specifically — appears in only 8.5% of records. Most of what's being claimed is general power-electronics architecture applied to a solar context, not solar-native circuitry.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to pv inverters & balance of system patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the field is still open
The leading assignee's 34 families set the pace, but with the top 10 combined at only 33.7% of all 517 records, most of the field's competitive intensity lives outside the ranked leaders — in co-filing relationships and in sub-areas that haven't attracted dense claim coverage yet.
A clear leader without a blocking position
The top-ranked assignee holds 34 families against a fifth-place count of 16 and a tenth-place count of 11 — a steep early drop-off that flattens quickly. That pattern points to a leader with scale advantage in filing volume, not a company that has cornered any single claim area.
Co-filing is concentrated around one company
Ten co-assignee pairs appear in the data, and the strongest pairing links two related entities at a count of 7, with two further pairings each at 4 involving named individual inventors. Co-assignment here reads as corporate-family filing and inventor consultancy relationships rather than broad industry cross-licensing.
Filing is multi-jurisdictional but US-centred
The United States receives the largest share of filings at 200, ahead of Europe (80), India (68), the WIPO PCT route (66), Australia (27) and Germany (19). The India and PCT volumes signal that applicants are actively pursuing protection outside the traditional US/Europe axis, likely tracking where PV manufacturing and deployment is growing.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| General Electric Co | 0 | — |
| ABB (Schweiz) AG | 0 | — |
| Xslent Energy Technologies LLC | 0 | — |
| Georgia Tech Research Corporation | 0 | — |
| Hitachi Energy Ltd | 0 | — |
| FTC Solar Inc | 0 | — |
| Huawei Digital Power Technologies Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this from here
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, a filing strategy, or tracking a competitor.
Check freedom-to-operate against the most-cited records
The five most-cited records in this set, several dating to the mid-2000s, still shape claim scope for inverter topology and DC-to-AC conversion methods. Any new filing in core power-stage or control-circuit territory should be checked against these before drafting.
Run a freedom-to-operate search →Model the under-claimed branches before a competitor does
Degradation modelling, digital-twin maintenance and adaptive switching-frequency control under variable irradiance all sit under the 10% classification threshold. A first claim written now, ahead of density building up, has more room to define its own scope.
Draft a claim scope in Eureka →Track the leading assignee's next moves
A 34-family leader with a shallow drop-off to the rest of the field is worth watching for where it files next, particularly given the recent-year momentum data showing a pause consistent with publication lag rather than retreat.
Set up assignee monitoring →Questions practitioners ask about this landscape
One assignee leads the ranked field with 34 families, noticeably ahead of the fifth-place holder at 16 and the tenth-place holder at 11. However, the top 5 assignees combined only account for 21.1% of all 517 records in scope, and the top 10 combined reach 33.7%, so no single company or small group controls the majority of filings. The practical implication is that a freedom-to-operate check needs to look well beyond the leading few names, into the long tail of single- and few-filing entrants.
Filings grew 56% from 2021 (25 records) to 2024 (39 records), the last span of years that can be treated as complete. The 2025 and 2026 figures in the raw data look much lower, but that reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication, not an actual drop in filing activity. Treat any year within about 18 months of the data cut-off as an undercount, and rely on 2024 and earlier for trend conclusions.
H02J (power supply and grid systems) and H02M (power conversion, AC/DC and related) are the two largest classes, covering 55.9% and 46.8% of the 517 records respectively — note these overlap because records often carry both classes. Photovoltaic-specific H02S appears in only 8.5% of records, meaning the bulk of claim density sits in general power-electronics architecture rather than solar-native circuitry. Measurement and control-adjacent classes such as G01R, G05B and H02H each sit under 10%, marking thinner claim territory.
The classification data shows several sub-areas sitting under 10% of the 517-record total, including component degradation modelling, digital-twin-based predictive maintenance, current-sensor fault detection, and adaptive switching-frequency control tied to variable solar irradiance. Low classification share signals thinner claim language in that specific area, not necessarily a smaller underlying engineering problem — it often means the problem hasn't been claimed narrowly yet. A recent filing like US12530511B1, which combines digital-twin modelling with inverter degradation estimation, sits right in one of these thinner bands.
The United States receives the largest volume at 200 filings, followed by the European Patent Office at 80, India at 68, the WIPO PCT route at 66, Australia at 27, and Germany at 19. The strong India and PCT figures suggest applicants are pursuing protection well beyond the traditional US-Europe filing axis, likely tracking growth in PV manufacturing and deployment markets. A filing strategy limited to the US and Europe alone would miss a meaningful share of where this art is actually being protected.
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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.