Smart Grid Management for Residential Energy Patents
Smart Grid Management for Residential Energy Patent Landscape in 2026
This is a highly concentrated, early-stage niche: Sacramento Municipal Utility District and Kyocera Corporation together account for the bulk of documented filings, anchored in power-supply and grid-systems technology. Annual filing volume has eased from its 2018 peak, leaving the field thinly covered and open to new entrants across several adjacent technology branches.
Sacramento Municipal Utility District leads a heavily concentrated field
Sacramento Municipal Utility District holds the top position with 5 patent records, followed by Kyocera Corporation with 3 patent records; together they dominate the upper tier of this niche corpus.
The top five filers account for 58% of the combined total among the hundred largest filers, indicating a steep concentration gradient with a wide gap between the two institutional leaders and the long tail of individual and academic filers each holding a single record.
| # | Applicant | Patent records | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sacramento Municipal Utility District | 5 | |
| 2 | Kyocera Corporation | 3 | |
| 3 | SUBBARATNAM B | 1 | |
| 4 | DR N LAVANYA | 1 | |
| 5 | RAGHU Y | 1 | |
| 6 | KUMAR NELLORE MANOJ | 1 | |
| 7 | DEVI CHITRA S | 1 |
| # | Applicant | Patent records | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | SWAROOP ANAND B | 1 | |
| 9 | SRIKANTH S | 1 | |
| 10 | Toshiba Corporation | 1 | |
| 11 | ANGAYARKANNI N | 1 | |
| 12 | Florida Atlantic University | 1 | |
| 13 | MITTAL SHAILENDRA KUMAR | 1 |
The leaders’ positions reflect institutional R&D by a public utility and a Japanese electronics manufacturer, suggesting that sustained grid-integration expertise — rather than broad portfolio coverage — defines the frontier here.
The most recent 18–24 months of filings are subject to publication lag and likely undercount current activity; trend readings for 2025–2026 should be treated as provisional. Longer-window growth, applicant concentration, and technology-route coverage are therefore more reliable signals than the latest-year bar alone.
Filing activity has eased from its 2018 peak; power-grid systems dominate the technology mix
The annual filing trend reveals intermittent activity since 2017, peaking in 2018 and again in 2021, while the technology composition is anchored in H02J power-supply and grid-systems patents with secondary coverage in business-process and AI-computing branches.
Annual filing trend
Filings spiked briefly in 2018 and 2021 before easing; 2025–2026 values are provisional due to publication lag and should not be read as a sustained recovery or further decline.
↗ Hover for values · click a bar to ask EurekaTechnology composition
H02J (power supply and grid systems) is the dominant branch, with G06Q (business and commerce data processing) as a secondary cluster; branches covering AI models, EV propulsion, and communications protocols each hold only a small share, marking them as relatively under-served.
↗ 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.
Power control apparatus, power control method, and…
A power control apparatus (<b>10</b>) includes a communication interface (<b>21</b>) that transmits and receives signals; a memory (<b>22</b>) that stores information related to power control to perform upon the communication interface (<b>21</b>) receiving a signal of a notification related to power consumption; and a controller (<b>20</b>) that, upon the… (excerpt from the patent abstract)
| # | Patent | Citations |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Energy Control And Storage System For Controlling … | 6 |
| 2 | Energy control and storage system for controlling … | 2 |
| 3 | Power control apparatus, power control method, and… | 2 |
| 4 | Power control device, power control method, and po… | 2 |
| 5 | Systems and methods for smart grid data analysis a… | 1 |
| 6 | Energy Control And Storage System For Controlling … | 1 |
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 declining lifecycle signal, steep concentration, absent recorded collaborations, and a US-led jurisdiction profile shapes the risk and opportunity calculus for any new entrant or incumbent looking to expand.
Field is in decline from a shallow 2018 peak
The lifecycle stage is classified as Decline, with annual filings easing back from the 2018 peak. The corpus is small in absolute terms, which means the decline reflects low overall volume rather than a crowded, maturing technology. New filings could meaningfully shift the landscape.
Lifecycle: DeclineTwo institutional leaders dominate; the remainder are individuals or academics
The top five filers hold 58% of the hundred largest filers’ combined total, and the gap between second-ranked Kyocera Corporation and the rest is stark. Individual inventors and academic institutions each register only one patent record, indicating no strong second tier of corporate challengers. This leaves room for a focused corporate entrant to establish a clear ranking position quickly.
High concentrationNo recorded co-applicant activity in this corpus
Evidence for cross-organization collaboration filings is pending — no co-applicant pairs are recorded in this dataset. The absence of consortium or joint-assignment activity suggests that the field has not yet attracted the collaborative R&D structures common in more mature grid-technology domains. This could represent either an untapped partnership opportunity or a signal that the niche is too narrow to have motivated formal alliances to date.
Collaboration: none recordedUnited States leads; India and Europe show early but real presence
The United States accounts for the largest single jurisdiction count, followed by India, with Europe (EPO) and WIPO (PCT) each contributing a smaller share. Brazil appears as an outlier jurisdiction. India’s presence — driven primarily by individual and academic filers — suggests growing academic interest in residential smart-grid solutions outside traditional utility-market leaders.
US-led, India emergingGo 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.
Co-filing pairs, ranked by the number of jointly-filed patent families.
Sacramento Municipal Utility District and Kyocera Corporation lead on different technology emphases
The two institutional leaders diverge in approach: the public utility concentrates on grid-systems and business-process integration, while Kyocera extends into communication protocols alongside core grid technology.
Sacramento Municipal Utility District
Holds 5 patent records — the largest share in this corpus — focused on H02J power-supply and grid systems alongside G06Q business and administrative data processing. This dual emphasis reflects a utility operator’s perspective: grid-level power management paired with the data and billing infrastructure needed to serve residential customers. No momentum trend is recorded for the top applicant in the available data.
patent records: 5Kyocera Corporation
Holds 3 patent records, with technology emphasis spanning H02J power-supply and grid systems, H04M telephonic communication, and H04Q switching and selecting. The communication-layer coverage distinguishes Kyocera from the utility-operator leader and points toward device-level or home-energy-management system integration. No recent-period momentum trend is separately recorded for Kyocera in the available applicant momentum data.
patent records: 3| Applicant | Recent (3 yrs) | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| SWAROOP ANAND B | 1 | ▲ new entrant |
| SUBBARATNAM B | 1 | ▲ new entrant |
| SRIKANTH S | 1 | ▲ new entrant |
Under-served branches in AI models, EV integration, and control systems
Several IPC branches present in the corpus hold very low patent-record counts relative to the dominant H02J class, making them worth monitoring as adjacent areas where new filings could establish an early position.
G06N · Computing based on AI models
This branch accounts for only 2 patent records and a 7% share of the technology composition. Given the growing practical relevance of machine-learning approaches to demand forecasting, load balancing, and anomaly detection in residential grids, the current sparsity suggests that AI-native grid-management methods are not yet well covered in this specific residential context. Florida Atlantic University is the only academic filer with explicit G06N focus, alongside a small cluster of individual inventors, leaving the branch open to a corporate entrant with applied AI capabilities.
Search this in Eureka →G05B · Control & regulating systems
G05B holds only 1 patent record — the smallest share among all recorded branches at 3%. Control and regulation systems underpin home energy management hardware, including smart thermostats, inverter controllers, and demand-response actuators. The near-absence of coverage here, combined with the plausible technical link to residential grid management, makes it an observable gap. Entry would likely require combining grid-communication expertise with embedded control-system know-how.
Search this in Eureka →How leaders differ by technology route
Strength of each leader across the main technology routes.
| Player | H02J 3 · Power supply & grid systems | G06Q 50 · Business, commerce & admin data processing | B60L 53 · Electric vehicle propulsion | G06Q 10 · Business, commerce & admin data processing | H02J 7 · Power supply & grid systems |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sacramento Municipal Utility District | Strong · 5 | Strong · 4 | Absent | Absent | Absent |
| Kyocera Corporation | Strong · 3 | Absent | Absent | Absent | Absent |
| Florida Atlantic University | Strong · 1 | Strong · 1 | Absent | Strong · 1 | Absent |
Frequently asked questions
There are 9 patent families in scope for this smart grid management for residential energy landscape.
Sacramento Municipal Utility District is the leading filer, holding 5 patent records — the highest count among all applicants in this corpus.
H02J (power supply and grid systems) is the dominant branch, with the highest patent-record count in the technology composition. G06Q (business, commerce, and administrative data processing) is the secondary cluster.
The United States leads by jurisdiction count with 5 patent records, followed by India with 3, Europe (EPO) and WIPO (PCT) with 2 each, and Brazil with 1.
The lifecycle is classified as Decline: annual filings have eased back from the 2018 peak. The field is small in absolute volume, so this reflects low sustained activity rather than a saturated, crowded market.
No co-applicant collaboration filings are recorded in the current dataset. The absence of joint-assignment activity means no consortium or partnership structures have been documented within this specific niche to date.
Ready to map your own residential energy patent 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.