Shore Power Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Concentrated at the top. The top 5 assignees hold 59.1% of all 66 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 81.8% — a small group has staked out most of the claim space.
- Filings roughly doubled in three years. Filings rose from 3 in 2021 to 7 in 2024, a +133% increase, before the still-incomplete 2025-26 window understates the true count.
- Power and cabling dominate the claims. H02J (power supply & grid systems) and B63J (ship auxiliaries) each cover roughly a third of the 66 records, while robotics and connector classes remain comparatively thin.
Filing growth compares 2021 (3 records) with 2024 (7) — 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 66 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Shore power — also called cold ironing — lets a berthed vessel draw grid electricity instead of running its own diesel generators, cutting port-side emissions. This landscape covers 66 published records filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine shore power connection or port terminal electrification with a second technical thread: frequency conversion, cable management, connection standards, grid capacity, emission reduction, or cold ironing itself. That pairing narrows the set to filings that treat shore power as an engineering system rather than a generic electrification concept.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts in any trend chart are still filling in and should not be read as a slowdown. Patent families, not raw document counts, are the fairer basis for judging how much of this space any one filer actually occupies.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 66 records: how filing activity has moved year on year, and which IPC subclasses carry the technical weight.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings were negligible before 2021, climbed to a peak of 21 in 2023, and grew from 3 in 2021 to 7 in 2024 — a +133% rise over that span. Treat 2025 onward as incomplete rather than declining.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
H02J (power supply & grid systems) leads at 37.9% of the 66 records, followed by B63J (ship auxiliaries) at 30.3% and H02G (cable installation) at 28.8%. Robotics-adjacent classes B25J and vehicle class B62D sit in the low double digits, marking the edges of where this search string still finds relevant art.
Shares are the percentage of the 66 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Shore Power and Terminal Electrification with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about shore power and terminal electrification and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
Shore power connection with safety devices — AU2024387652A1
Filed by Igus SE & Co. KG, this application covers a shore power connection box with an explosion pressure relief device that routes arcing gases to a non-critical external area, plus interlocking plug protection covers that lock to one another during operation. The combination targets the specific failure mode of arcing explosions at the plug-cable interface, an operational-safety problem rather than a power-transfer one.Filed 2026-06-18 — among the most recent records in this landscape.
View full filing| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20200300073A1 | Oversized switchgear trailer for electric hydraulic fracturing | 39 |
| 2 | US11578577B2 | Oversized switchgear trailer for electric hydraulic fracturing | 18 |
| 3 | US20190389552A1 | System for providing power to a maritime vessel | 18 |
| 4 | WO2024129735A1 | Humanoid robot | 8 |
| 5 | US20190241243A1 | Buoyant vessel | 7 |
| 6 | US10399654B2 | Buoyant vessel | 6 |
| 7 | US20230272700A1 | Oversized switchgear trailer for electric hydraulic fracturing | 5 |
| 8 | CN220809787U | 一种自移式变压岸电连接系统 | 4 |
| 9 | CN104934975A | 一种高压变频船舶岸电系统 | 4 |
| 10 | EP4152537A1 | Cable feeding unit of cable management system | 3 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had more time to accumulate them — read them as a signal of influence within this corpus, not of current 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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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three findings from the ranking, the trend and the citation table that matter more than the raw counts on their own.
A small group controls most of the claim space
With the leader at 12 records and fifth place at 6, the field drops off sharply after the top few filers. Anyone entering now is filing into a space where the dominant safety-device and connector claims are already staked, but the remaining 13 ranked companies and unranked filers show there is still room outside that core.
Growth is real but recent, and 2024 is the last full year
Filings nearly tripled between 2021 and 2024 before peaking at 21 in 2023. Because publication lags filing by about 18 months, the apparent drop after 2024 reflects incomplete data, not cooling interest — a wrong read here could lead a team to under-invest in a still-growing area.
Grid-side and ship-side claims dominate over connector hardware
Power supply and grid systems (H02J) and ship auxiliaries (B63J) each cover roughly a third of records, while connectors and current collectors (H01R) sit at 12.1%. That gap suggests connector and plug-interface claims — the actual point of contact between vessel and shore — are comparatively less crowded than the systems around them.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to shore power and terminal electrification, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gate sits
The ranking spans 23 companies across maritime equipment makers, cable and connector specialists, port infrastructure engineers and grid electronics firms — a mix that reflects shore power's position at the junction of several established industries rather than a single new one.
The leading filer holds roughly a fifth of all records
At 12 of 66 records, the top assignee's position is built on breadth across the search terms rather than a single dominant patent family, spanning connection hardware and safety devices.
A cluster of mid-sized filers fills out the top 5
The drop from the leader's 12 to fifth place's 6 shows the top of this ranking is not a single dominant player but a small cluster, together accounting for 59.1% of all 66 records.
Beyond the top 10, filing activity is thin and scattered
Tenth place holds only 2 records, and co-assignee pairings are rare — just 3 pairs across the whole dataset — indicating most filers are working independently rather than through joint ventures.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Kongsberg Maritime AS | 0 | — |
| SCALEUP OÜ | 0 | — |
| APPTRONIK INC | 0 | -100% |
| US WELL SERVICES LLC | 0 | — |
| IGUS SE & CO KG | 0 | -100% |
| Igus GmbH | 0 | -100% |
| Yapimol Masco AS | 0 | — |
| NR Electric Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The landscape points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, sourcing, or identifying a filing gap.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leading assignees
With 81.8% of records held by the top 10 filers, a freedom-to-operate review should prioritise those portfolios first, particularly around plug protection and safety-device claims.
Run an FTO screen in EurekaTrack the 2023-2024 filing surge as it publishes forward
The peak year so far is 2023 at 21 records; watch how 2025-26 fills in over the next 18 months before concluding the growth has plateaued.
Set up trend monitoring in EurekaExplore the under-claimed connector and grid-capacity branches
H01R and grid-capacity-related claims sit well below the H02J and B63J density, suggesting room for a first-mover claim in those narrower branches.
Explore white space in EurekaCommon questions about shore power patents
The leading assignee in this dataset holds 12 of the 66 records in scope, with the top 5 assignees combined holding 39 records, or 59.1% of the field. That concentration is built across connection hardware, safety devices and cable management rather than a single blockbuster patent. The ranking covers 23 companies in total, spanning maritime equipment makers, cable specialists and port infrastructure engineers, so the picture is one of a small leading cluster followed by a long tail of lighter filers.
Filings grew from 3 in 2021 to 7 in 2024, a +133% increase, with a peak of 21 records in 2023. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the lower counts shown for 2025 and 2026 reflect incomplete data rather than an actual decline. Anyone assessing momentum should treat 2024 as the most recent complete year and expect the 2025-26 figures to rise as more filings publish.
Power supply and grid systems (IPC class H02J) appear in 37.9% of the 66 records, the largest single share, followed by ship auxiliaries (B63J) at 30.3% and cable installation (H02G) at 28.8%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should each be read against the full 66-record base, not against each other. Connector hardware (H01R) and robotics (B25J) sit lower, in the 10-12% range, marking comparatively less crowded technical branches within the same dataset.
AU2024387652A1, filed by Igus SE & Co. KG and published in mid-2026, covers a shore power connection box fitted with an explosion pressure relief device that vents arcing gases to a non-critical external area, combined with plug protection covers that lock together during use. It addresses a specific safety failure mode at the plug-cable interface rather than the broader power-transfer function of a shore power system. Anyone designing connection hardware with interlocking covers or built-in explosion venting for HVSC systems should review this filing's specific claim language before finalising a design.
The IPC composition shows connector and current-collector claims (H01R) and robotics-adjacent claims (B25J) at roughly 10-12% of the 66 records, well below the 30-38% density seen in the power-grid and ship-auxiliary classes. That gap, combined with only 3 co-assignee pairings across the whole dataset, suggests narrower branches like connector interface design and grid-capacity allocation at berth are less crowded and less consolidated through joint filing than the core power and cabling claims. A first claim in those areas would need to be specific enough to clear the existing safety-device and cable-management prior art already held by the leading filers.
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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.