Solid-State Transformer Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 21 families total, a small, still-forming field where a single 2025 filing year (7 records) accounts for a third of everything published.
- China files 12 of 21 records, against 5 from the United States and 3 from India — the receiving-office split shows where enforcement actually matters.
- No assignee holds more than a handful of families, and recent-year momentum is flat or negative even for the most active filers, leaving standardization claims genuinely open.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent families combining solid-state transformer, power electronic transformer and modular multilevel converter architectures with claims directed at standardized or scalable power-cell design. The search spans 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off, isolating documents that sit at the intersection of power conversion hardware (H02M) and grid-facing control (H02J), rather than solid-state transformers generally.
The filtered set is small — 21 families — which is itself informative: this is a niche still being staked out rather than a mature, crowded art. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the 2025 peak and the thin 2026 count understate real recent activity.
Filing trends and technology composition
Twenty-one families, six IPC subclasses and a filing curve that peaks late rather than climbing steadily — the shape of the data argues for a technology area that is still defining its standard, not consolidating around one.
A late, uneven peak
Filings sit at zero in 2017, reach a midpoint of 3 in 2022, and jump to 7 in 2025 before the partial 2026 count. That is not a smooth growth curve; it reads as a cluster of activity concentrated in the most recent complete year, with the earlier years serving as isolated proof-of-concept filings.
Power conversion dominates, control is secondary
All 21 records sit in H02M (power conversion), with 10 also touching H02J (power supply and grid systems) — confirming that modularity claims are being written primarily as circuit-topology hardware, with grid-integration claims layered on top. Control-systems classes (G05B, G05F, H02P) appear only once or twice each, suggesting the control-and-standardization layer is comparatively under-claimed relative to the hardware itself.
Shares are the percentage of the 21 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Solid-State Transformer Modularity and Standardization with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about solid-state transformer modularity and standardization and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records
Four-port power electronic transformer based on hybrid modular multilevel converter
A four-port power electronic transformer built on a hybrid modular multilevel converter (MMC), paired with DC/DC converters and an inverter. Each DC/DC converter carries a front stage, a high-frequency transformation stage and a back stage. The claimed split of duties — the MMC module and the DC/DC front stage jointly handling DC fault ride-through, with the MMC module regulating DC voltage — is presented as reducing device count relative to prior power electronic transformer designs.US9960666B2 · Southeast University · filed 2018-05-01
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20220166343A1 | Solid-state transformer having uninterrupted operation ability under ac/DC fault and control method thereof | 29 |
| 2 | CN108923618A | 电力电子变压器 | 10 |
| 3 | US20250279730A1 | Solid-state transformer | 8 |
| 4 | CN111600501A | 一种应用于电力电子变压器的PWM载波同步方法 | 5 |
| 5 | CN118971634A | 一种矿用直驱一体机的隔离非隔离混合拓扑 | 4 |
| 6 | US11431263B2 | Solid-state transformer having uninterrupted operation ability under AC/DC fault and control method thereof | 3 |
| 7 | CN119482763A | 基于MMC轻量化子模块的固态变压器拓扑及其混频调制方法 | 1 |
| 8 | US9960666B2 | Four-port power electronic transformer based on hybrid modular multilevel converter | 1 |
Citation counts favour older records by construction — treat them as a measure of influence within this searched set, not as a ranking of current technical 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. Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (8 of 8 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns matter more than any single ranking: where the filings are concentrated by geography, how thin the control-layer claims are, and how little repeat filing there is even among the more active assignees.
China is the primary battleground
China accounts for more than half of all receiving-office filings, with the United States a distant second at 5 and India at 3. Freedom-to-operate work that ignores Chinese filings in this space is checking the wrong jurisdiction first.
Grid-side claims are the differentiator, not the core
Every record touches power conversion (H02M), but only half also claim grid supply integration (H02J), and control classes barely register. Claims that tie modular cell design to specific grid-fault or protection behaviour are rarer than the base topology claims.
Peak year does not mean an active leader
The single busiest year, 2025, does not correspond to sustained activity from any one assignee — most named filers show 0 in the latest tracked year, several down 100% year-on-year. The peak looks like several parties filing once, not one party scaling up.
Collaboration is rare, not the norm
With just two co-filing pairs identified across the whole set, most families are filed by a single entity working alone. That limits how much can be inferred about consortium-style standardization efforts from the filing record itself.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to solid-state transformer modularity and standardization, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and how thin the lead is
No assignee in this dataset holds a commanding position. The most visible names — universities and a handful of power-equipment manufacturers — show single-digit family counts and flat or negative momentum in the most recent tracked year, which is unusual for a field this narrowly defined.
Universities are active but not scaling
Nanjing Normal University shows continued filing into the most recent year, while other academic filers such as Shanghai Jiao Tong University show no latest-year activity. Chinese universities collectively account for a meaningful share of the filer base, consistent with the China-heavy receiving-office split.
Established manufacturers have gone quiet recently
Delta Electronics appears in the assignee set but drops to zero filings in the latest tracked year, a 100% year-on-year decline. That does not necessarily mean disengagement — publication lag means 2025–2026 filings may not yet be visible — but it does mean no manufacturer is currently pulling ahead.
India's filers are early-stage, not sustained
An Indian technical institute appears in the assignee list with a recent drop to zero, matching India's overall modest 3-filing receiving-office count. This looks like early exploratory filing rather than an established program.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Nanjing Normal University | 1 | — |
| Delta Electronics, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Shanghai Jiao Tong University | 0 | — |
| NAT INST OF TECH PATNA | 0 | -100% |
| Qingdao Topscomm Communication Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Xi'an XD Power System Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Xi'an Jiaotong University | 0 | — |
| Yanshan University | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The filing pattern here rewards a targeted read rather than a broad one — the field is small enough that individual claims matter more than aggregate share.
Map the DC fault ride-through claim space
This sub-area shows the highest-cited record (US20220166343A1) and the representative filing (US9960666B2) both centring on fault handling — a closer claim-by-claim comparison would clarify how much room remains.
Explore in EurekaTrack China's receiving-office filings directly
With 12 of 21 records filed in China, monitoring new Chinese publications is the single highest-value ongoing signal for this technology.
Set up monitoring in EurekaReassess after the next publication cycle
Given the 18-month publication lag, the thin 2026 count is not yet a reliable signal — revisiting this landscape in early 2027 will surface the true 2025–2026 filing level.
Revisit this landscape in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
This dataset identifies 21 patent families published between 2015 and the 2026-07-31 cut-off that combine solid-state transformer or power electronic transformer terminology with modular multilevel converter or standardized power-cell claims. That is a small, tightly scoped set compared with solid-state transformers generally, because the search deliberately isolates modularity and standardization claims rather than the whole SST field. Given an 18-month publication lag, the true count for 2025 and 2026 filings is likely higher than currently visible.
China is the leading receiving office by a wide margin, with 12 of the 21 tracked records, compared with 5 in the United States and 3 in India. One family was also filed at the European Patent Office. Anyone doing freedom-to-operate or licensing work in this niche should treat Chinese filings as the primary jurisdiction to clear, not a secondary check.
No. The recent-year momentum data shows every tracked assignee, including active filers like Nanjing Normal University and manufacturers such as Delta Electronics, at zero or near-zero filings in the latest tracked year, several down 100% year-on-year. With only 21 families spread across universities, manufacturers and grid-equipment firms, and just two identified co-assignee pairs, this is a fragmented field rather than one with an established leader.
US9960666B2, assigned to Southeast University and filed in 2018, claims a four-port power electronic transformer built on a hybrid modular multilevel converter combined with DC/DC converters and an inverter. Its distinguishing feature is the division of fault-handling duties between the MMC module and the DC/DC converter's front stage, which the patent presents as reducing the device count needed for DC fault ride-through. Anyone designing a four-port or multi-terminal SST with MMC-based fault handling should review this claim set closely before finalizing an architecture.
The IPC composition shows every record touching power conversion (H02M) but only about half touching grid-integration classes (H02J), and control-systems classes such as G05B and G05F appearing in only one or two records each. That gap points to under-claimed territory in standardized interconnect protocols, cross-cell PWM synchronization, and control logic for DC fault ride-through — areas where the base hardware topology is claimed but the standardization and control layer built on top of it is not.
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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.