Virtual Power Plant Microgrid Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
- Filing peaked in 2023 at 9 families and has not returned to that level, suggesting the field is consolidating around known architectures rather than expanding into new ones.
- One 2018 grant (US9960637B2) carries 201 citations, an order of magnitude above every other record in the set — it anchors most cloud-based distributed energy management claims filed since.
- G06Q business-logic claims appear in 18 of 33 families alongside H02J grid hardware, meaning dispatch and settlement logic is being claimed as tightly as the electrical control itself.
Filing growth compares 2021 (4 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.
What this landscape covers
This review tracks patent families at the intersection of virtual power plant (VPP) aggregation and microgrid control — filings that combine distributed energy resource aggregation with islanding, grid-forming, or microgrid energy management claims. The dataset spans 2015 through mid-2026 and totals 33 published families, a small but technically dense corpus concentrated in a handful of assignees.
Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts in the trend below are understated and should not be read as a real decline yet. The signal worth trusting is the shape of the curve through 2023-2024, and the composition of IPC classes attached to each family.
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Filing trend and technology mix
33 families is a small enough sample that any single assignee's filing decision moves the yearly count. Read the trend as directional, not statistically firm.
A flat-to-declining curve after 2023
Filing was at zero in 2017, climbed to a peak of 9 families in 2023, and the 2022 midpoint of 3 shows the run-up was recent rather than a long build. The absence of sustained growth past the peak points to a technology whose core claim space is largely staked out, with new entrants filing narrower continuations rather than founding new architectures.
Grid hardware dominates, but business logic is close behind
H02J (power supply and grid systems) appears in 31 of 33 families, effectively the entry ticket for this search. G06Q (business, commerce and admin data processing) appears in 18 — over half — confirming that aggregation and settlement logic is claimed nearly as often as the electrical control itself. B60L (EV propulsion) at 10 shows a meaningful vehicle-to-grid thread, while G06N (AI models) at just 2 marks a genuinely thin branch relative to the hype around AI-driven dispatch.
Shares are the percentage of the 33 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 Microgrid with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about virtual power plant microgrid and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe record every later filer cites
US20250158409A1 — "Virtual power plant" (Cummins Inc., filed 2025-05-15)
The present disclosure relates to the use of power-agnostic mobile vehicles, including internal combustion, hybrid, fuel cell, and battery electric vehicles, which can collectively transfer power back to the grid in ever larger and growing quantities of power. In other words, the present disclosure relates to the use of a network of vehicles to act as a grid.Notable for treating vehicle powertrain type as agnostic to the grid-forming claim — the aggregation logic, not the vehicle drivetrain, is the inventive core.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US9960637B2 | Renewable energy integrated storage and generation systems, apparatus, and methods with cloud distributed ene… | 201 |
| 2 | US11695274B1 | Aggregation platform for intelligent local energy management system | 10 |
| 3 | US10903650B2 | Grid asset manager | 10 |
| 4 | US20220215486A1 | Optimization controller for distributed energy resources | 7 |
| 5 | US11747781B1 | Intelligent local energy management system at local mixed power generating sites for providing grid services | 5 |
| 6 | US20230297047A1 | Intelligent local energy management system at local mixed power generating sites for providing grid services | 4 |
| 7 | US11664678B2 | Grid asset manager | 4 |
| 8 | US20230275456A1 | Grid asset manager | 3 |
| 9 | US20210175709A1 | Grid asset manager | 3 |
| 10 | US20230420941A1 | Aggregation platform for intelligent local energy management system | 2 |
Citation counts favour older filings in any searched corpus; treat this table as a map of influence, not of what is newest or best.
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Three patterns stand out once the ranking and trend data are read together.
One grant anchors the whole cloud-DER cluster
US9960637B2 sits an order of magnitude above every other record in citation count. Anything claiming cloud-distributed energy management services for renewable storage and generation should expect this grant to surface in prior-art searches and freedom-to-operate reviews.
Growth has not continued past the 2023 peak
With the 2022 midpoint at only 3 families, the run to 9 was compressed into roughly a year, and counts have not exceeded that since. Combined with the 18-month publication lag, this looks like a maturing claim space rather than a still-accelerating one.
Dispatch and settlement logic is claimed as tightly as hardware
Over half the corpus pairs H02J grid control with G06Q business-process claims — bidding, settlement, or aggregation logic. Drafting a pure hardware claim without addressing the adjacent business-method layer leaves an opening competitors are already using.
Collaboration is rare; most filings are solo
Only two co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, one involving two Chinese state-grid-linked entities and one a two-inventor US pairing. Most assignees are filing independently rather than through joint ventures, which keeps ownership of any given claim cluster simple to trace.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to virtual power plant microgrid, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and what they've stopped filing
Recent-year momentum across the named assignees is uniformly flat: every tracked assignee shows zero filings in the latest recorded year, several with a -100% year-on-year drop. That is consistent with the 18-month publication lag rather than an actual filing freeze, but it means the ranking below reflects accumulated position, not current velocity.
No assignee shows current-year activity
Cummins, Stored Energy Systems, and the two Chinese state-grid-linked entities all report zero filings in the most recent tracked year, several down -100% YoY from the prior year. Read this against the publication lag before concluding anyone has exited the space.
State grid and design institute filing together
The strongest co-assignee pair links a state grid operator with an affiliated electric power design institute, a structure typical of Chinese utility-side microgrid deployments where the utility and its engineering arm co-own the resulting IP.
Filing is US-centric with a thin international tail
Nineteen of thirty-three records were filed through the US, versus 3 each for India and WIPO's PCT route, 2 each for Canada and China, and 1 for the EPO. A first US filing without a matching PCT or EP counterpart is the norm here, not the exception.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Newell Co., Ltd. (transliterated) | 0 | -100% |
| Herui Technology Co., Ltd. (transliterated) | 0 | — |
| STORED ENERGY SYST LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Cummins Inc. | 0 | — |
| State Grid Shanghai Municipal Electric Power Company | 0 | — |
| Shanghai Electric Power Design Institute Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| STATMAN STU | 0 | — |
| SR UNIVERSITY | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this
The dataset points to a narrow, occupied core and a thinner set of adjacent branches. Two directions follow from that.
Map claim scope against the 201-citation anchor
Before drafting in cloud-based distributed energy management, run a claim chart against US9960637B2 specifically — it dominates the citation graph and is the most likely prior-art collision for storage-plus-generation aggregation claims.
Explore in EurekaTest the AI-dispatch gap for real freedom to operate
G06N appears in only 2 of 33 families despite widespread interest in AI-driven dispatch. Run a deeper prior-art pull specifically on machine-learning-based DER dispatch before assuming the gap is real rather than a search-string artifact.
Explore in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
This dataset identifies 33 published patent families combining virtual power plant or aggregated distributed energy claims with microgrid control, islanding, or grid-forming claims, filed between 2015 and mid-2026. That is a small, specialised corpus rather than a broad field — most of the volume sits in the H02J power-grid classification, with over half also carrying a G06Q business-logic claim. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the true 2025-2026 count is higher than currently visible.
By citation count, US9960637B2, covering cloud-distributed energy management services for renewable storage and generation, is the clear anchor at 201 citations — more than the next several most-cited records combined. Other frequently cited records include aggregation-platform and grid-asset-manager patents, each in the single-to-low-double-digit citation range. High citation counts in a search corpus like this tend to favour older filings, so treat this as a map of influence on later drafting rather than a ranking of current technical importance.
Filing peaked at 9 families in 2023, up from just 3 at the 2022 midpoint, but has not exceeded that peak since. Combined with every tracked assignee showing zero filings in the latest recorded year, the visible trend looks flat to declining. Some of that apparent drop is an artifact of the roughly 18-month gap between filing and publication, so the 2025-2026 figures should be treated as provisional rather than a confirmed slowdown.
G06N (AI-based computing models) appears in only 2 of the 33 families, a thin footprint given how often AI-driven dispatch is discussed in industry commentary — this is a candidate white-space area worth a dedicated prior-art pull. Other under-claimed branches include cross-microgrid islanding handoff, black-start sequencing specific to grid-forming inverters, and EV fleets framed explicitly as mobile grid-forming assets rather than simple V2G power sources. A first claim in any of these would need to tie the control method to a specific measurable grid condition to avoid the broad cloud-DER prior art already in force.
The United States receiving office accounts for 19 of the 33 filings, far ahead of India and the WIPO PCT route at 3 each, and Canada and China at 2 each. Named assignees include Cummins, Stored Energy Systems, and a Chinese state grid operator filing jointly with an affiliated electric power design institute — one of only two co-assignee pairs in the whole dataset. Most assignees file independently rather than jointly, and the corpus does not show a single company with runaway dominance the way the citation count for US9960637B2 might suggest.
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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.