Virtual Power Plant Design Optimization Patent Landscape 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (1 records) with 2024 (1) — 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.
A small, concentrated field around dispatch allocation
Virtual power plant design optimization, as tracked here, covers portfolio, aggregation, dispatch and sizing optimization for fleets of distributed energy resources — the software and control layer that decides how to allocate a needed energy adjustment across batteries, generation and demand-response assets. The corpus is small: 13 published patent families across an eleven-year window, with most of the claim density sitting in a single mechanism — cost-based allocation across a resource fleet.
Filing activity is uneven rather than steadily rising, and it clusters in a small number of receiving offices, which means the field is still being defined by a handful of active filers rather than settled by broad industry consensus.
How the filings break down
Thirteen published families is a small corpus, so read the trend and the classification split as directional signals rather than statistically firm shares.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings stayed at zero until momentum built through the early 2020s, peaked at six families in 2023, and dropped back to a single family by the 2022 midpoint comparison — flat-to-declining rather than a clean ramp. The 2025–2026 years are undercounted because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months.
IPC subclass composition
G06Q (business/commerce data processing) touches all 13 families, and H02J (power supply and grid systems) covers nine of them — together they define the core claim space. G05B, G06F, B60L and G06N each appear in three families or fewer, marking the edges of the field rather than its centre.
Shares are the percentage of the 13 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Virtual Power Plant Design Optimization with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about virtual power plant design optimization and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe records shaping this landscape
US12462313B2 — Energy dispatch optimization using a fleet of distributed energy resources
A dispatch optimization system and virtual power plant can be utilized and controlled in order to support the operations of a power distribution system. For example, upon determining an electrical need, the dispatch optimization system and/or virtual power plant may make an energy adjustment by allocating the energy adjustment among distributed energy resources of a fleet of distributed energy resources in order to achieve the energy adjustment. The dispatch optimization system and/or virtual power plant may determine the allocation among the distributed energy resources based on the economic costs and storage costs to use each distributed energy resource.Granted to Power Management Holdings (U.S.), Inc., 2025-11-04 — the most recent grant in the tracked corpus and the clearest current statement of the cost-based dispatch-allocation claim.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CN115271467A | 考虑电碳协同优化的虚拟电厂调度优化方法及应用 | 31 |
| 2 | US10635056B2 | Model and control virtual power plant performance | 4 |
| 3 | US20240127370A1 | Energy dispatch optimization using a fleet of distributed energy resources | 3 |
| 4 | CA2846342A1 | Use of demand response (DR) and distributed energy resources (DER) to mitigate the impact of variable energy … | 2 |
| 5 | US12579588B2 | Method and system utilizing one or more virtual power plant capacity units | 1 |
Citation counts are drawn from the searched corpus only and favour older filings; a low count on a 2024-2026 record does not mean it is unimportant.
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 (5 of 5 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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With only 13 families in scope, every data point carries more weight than it would in a larger corpus — read the following as directional findings to test against a full freedom-to-operate search, not as a market-share study.
Growth stalled after the 2023 peak
The trend climbed from zero as late as 2017 to six families in 2023, then fell to a single family at the 2022 midpoint marker used for growth comparison. That pattern reads as a filing burst tied to a specific commercial push rather than sustained category growth, and the 2025-2026 count is artificially low because publication has not caught up with filing.
Grid-control dispatch is the crowded core
H02J (power supply and grid systems) appears in nine of the 13 families, and G06Q (business-process data processing) appears in all 13 — together they define where claim space is already occupied. Filing a new dispatch-allocation claim inside that overlap means designing carefully around the cost-comparison mechanism already granted to Power Management Holdings.
The most-cited record is a different mechanism, not a competitor
CN115271467A's carbon-coordinated dispatch scheduling method carries far more citations than any other record in the set, but it optimizes on a carbon-cost variable rather than the economic/storage-cost comparison used in the US dispatch cluster. High citation count here signals influence on grid-operator-side scheduling research, not dominance over aggregator-side dispatch claims.
Filing is concentrated in three offices
The United States, Canada and China account for nine of the 13 tracked filings between them; Australia, the EPO and India each show a single filing. That leaves most jurisdictions with little directly on-point prior art in this specific claim combination, which is relevant when planning where to file next rather than where to defend.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to virtual power plant design optimization, with the prior art for and against each one.
Turning this landscape into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision
A 13-family corpus is a starting map, not a final answer — the next steps are about testing these findings against a fuller search and against your own claim drafts.
Run a full freedom-to-operate check on cost-based dispatch allocation
If a design touches allocation of energy adjustments across a DER fleet using economic or storage cost comparisons, check it against US12462313B2 and its related filing US20240127370A1 before proceeding.
Check claim scope in EurekaDraft around the identified white space
AI-trained dispatch policy models and EV-fleet dispatch each show only one filed family — a first claim combining a learned allocation policy with a vehicle-connected resource class has genuine room to file.
Explore white space with EurekaWatch for the 18-month publication catch-up
Filings from 2025 and 2026 are undercounted in every chart on this page; re-run this search in six to twelve months before finalising a filing strategy based on recent-year trend lines.
Set a monitoring alert in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
The tracked corpus contains 13 published patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026 under a search combining virtual power plant terminology with portfolio, aggregation, dispatch and sizing optimization language. That is a small, concentrated field rather than a mature one. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one to two years are undercounted and the true filing volume for 2024-2026 is higher than currently visible.
By citation count, CN115271467A on carbon-coordinated virtual power plant dispatch scheduling leads the set with 31 citations, well ahead of the next-most-cited record, US10635056B2 on modelling and controlling virtual power plant performance, at 4 citations. Power Management Holdings (U.S.), Inc. holds the most recently granted claim in the set, US12462313B2, and shows a repeated inventor group across three co-assignee pairings, which points to sustained prosecution rather than a single filing. Citation counts favour older records, so treat this as a signal of past influence, not of which claims matter most today.
It is crowded at the centre and open at the edges. Nine of the 13 families sit in the H02J power-grid-control classification and all 13 touch G06Q business-process classification, meaning cost-based dispatch allocation claims face real prior art. Sub-areas that combine AI-based dispatch modelling or electric-vehicle fleets as dispatchable resources have only one family each, which is genuine white space rather than an oversight.
US12462313B2, granted to Power Management Holdings (U.S.), Inc. on 2025-11-04, covers a dispatch optimization system that allocates an energy adjustment across a fleet of distributed energy resources by comparing the economic and storage costs of each resource. It does not cover dispatch decided by fixed priority rules, contractual dispatch rights, or sizing decisions made before dispatch time. Anyone assessing freedom to operate should also check the related earlier filing US20240127370A1, since amendments there can affect the scope of the later grant.
The United States leads with four filings in this dataset, followed by Canada with three and China with two; Australia, the European Patent Office and India each show a single filing. With only six receiving offices represented across 13 families, most jurisdictions worldwide currently have little to no directly competing prior art in this specific claim combination, which matters for anyone planning filing strategy outside the US, Canada and China.
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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.