Regulated utilities are usually patent-light — they buy equipment, they do not fence IP. So US12068602B2, granted to Duke Energy Corporation on August 20, 2024, for an "advanced power distribution platform," is worth a careful read precisely because of who filed it.
Claim 1's subject is a platform — software and control infrastructure for coordinating distribution operations. The CPC tags confirm it: H02J 3/0012 (circuit arrangements for power distribution networks), G05B 19/042 (programmable controller), H02J 2203/10 and 2203/20 (information/communication for distribution networks). Nothing here is a transformer or a breaker; it is the orchestration layer above them.
Why a utility patents this: distribution-grid management is becoming a software problem as distributed solar, storage, and EVs proliferate on feeders that were designed for one-way power flow. The utility that builds — and fences — the platform that manages this complexity protects a capability that would otherwise be supplied (and owned) by a vendor.
The patent-versus-product point is gentler than usual here, because a utility filing on its own operational platform likely is describing something it operates or intends to. But claim 1 still fences a method, and the value depends on how distinctive Duke's platform architecture is versus the distribution-management systems vendors already sell.
The landscape signal is the real story. When a regulated utility starts building software IP, it is a tell that the distribution grid's value is migrating to the control layer, and that utilities have noticed they risk ceding that layer to technology vendors. Duke's 2024 grant — alongside Utilidata's distributed-operations filings in the same period — marks utilities entering the grid-software IP game they used to sit out.