Industrial innovation characteristics and spatial differentiation of smart grid technology in China based on patent mining

Based on the perspective of smart grid patent, this study crawls the smart grid patent data from 2009 to 2020, and extracts the hotspots of innovation space in different stages. By mining the patent information, this paper identifies the hot innovation fields of smart grid in China and the world, and selects IPC classifications of H02J, G01R and H04L as the main hot smart grid technologies for innovation space analysis. In further study, methods such as global autocorrelation analysis are used to comprehensively analyze the spatial distribution of smart grid innovation in China. It is found that innovation activities of China's smart grid industry are spatially agglomerated. However, during 2017-2020, such spatial distribution represents China's smart grid industry has approached the distribution pattern of normal innovation industries which tends to be discrete or competitive. According to autocorrelation analysis, China's smart grid innovation space has obvious agglomeration characteristics, showing a gradual decline trend from the center to the periphery, and the diffusion effect has initially appeared. Finally, the smart grid patent statistics and the spatial ellipse parameters intuitively present the innovation characteristics of China's smart grid industry in terms of the evolution of the spatial differentiation during 2009-2012,2013-2016, and 2017-2020.

Automated summary

This study analyzed the hotspots of innovation in smart grid technology in China and the world based on patent data, revealing spatial agglomeration characteristics in China's smart grid industry. However, from 2017 to 2020, the spatial distribution of smart grid innovation in China has shown signs of approaching a normal innovation industry distribution pattern that tends to be discrete or competitive.