Every new rooftop solar array in much of the country has to be able to switch itself off at the module level — that is rapid shutdown, and it is code. US10666161B2, granted to Koolbridge Solar on May 26, 2020, claims one way to build the safety shut-down function that satisfies it.
The CPC placement is instructive. H02M 1/32 and H02M 1/36 cover means for protecting converters and for switching on/off; H02J 3/383 ties it to PV grid integration; H02J 7/0068 covers battery protection. The patent sits at the intersection of converter protection and grid disconnection — the wiring-safety layer, not the energy-harvest layer.
Why this maps to deployment: rapid-shutdown requirements emerged because firefighters could not safely work on a roof carrying live DC from sunlit panels. The code forced module-level or string-level de-energization. That regulatory demand created a market for the exact function this patent claims, and a thicket of competing methods to deliver it.
The patent-to-product caution is sharp here. A safety shut-down claim is a method of de-energizing; it is not a monopoly on rapid shutdown, which many vendors implement with module-level power electronics from entirely different patent families. Koolbridge fenced off its approach, not the regulatory category.
The throughline from patent to grid: a 2020 safety patent is downstream of a code requirement and upstream of the installed base. It is a small, concrete example of how a deployment rule pulls IP into existence — the regulation defines the function, and the patents race to claim ways of providing it.