A new report by World Economic Forum and Accenture highlights a surge in energy-related patents, underscoring a shift from hardware to digital solutions, focusing on grid modernization, resilience, and customer-centric energy models.
The world is not flat, and neither is the electricity load.
Only a few years ago, so-called energy transition was more of a supply side thing—a desire to decarbonize electricity with a shift to renewables and energy efficiency. Demand was stagnating, at least in the U.S., and the economics seemed right for power generation change.
Suddenly, the pressure from data center growth, industrial automation and artificial intelligence training capacity needs is changing that dynamic in the developed world and shifting the focus to load, resiliency and the customer sector itself. These challenges are motivating a race to reinvent the grid in ways which increasingly include decentralized and microgrid systems.
These trends are noted in a World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) study analyzing 10 years of data around energy patent applications. This WIPO analysis is highlighted in “Electricity Reinvented: How Innovation is Transforming the Future of Power Systems,” a new report released in January by World Economic Forum (WEF) in collaboration with global consulting firm Accenture.