During periods of power system stress, demand bidding (DB) programs encourage large electricity consumers to submit curtailment capacity bids and carry out load reduction, in return for financial rewards. In this paper, a real-time DB (RT-DB) program with applications in discrete manufacturing facilities is considered. A discrete manufacturing production model is constructed and an automated RT-DB algorithm is designed. An optimization problem, where the objective is to maximize the profits for manufacturers, is formulated. Solving this problem enables the RT-DB algorithm to automatically generate optimal load-reduction bids with adjusted production and energy plans. A case study is described, which shows that the proposed algorithm reduced the load demand during an RT-DB event, increasing the manufacturer's profits. Furthermore, the relationship between the incentive rate and the demand elasticity of the consumer, as well as the production volume and profits is described.

In industrial automation fields, seamless connection of the capabilities of smart wireless devices to a high-bandwidth and deterministic real-time Ethernet-based industrial backbone has emerged as an important research focus. This study describes a method for integration of WirelessHART networks into the Ethernet Powerlink backbone. A Linux-based open Powerlink-WirelessHART gateway (PW-GW) solution is proposed. By implementing the proposed application layer translation method on PW-GW, the gap between the Powerlink protocol and the WirelessHART protocol is bridged. Additionally, we develop a prototype of the PW-GW solution and construct an experimental system to demonstrate its function and performance. The communication delay of the system is measured to verify that the PW-GW developed in this study satisfies the real-time requirements of time-critical industrial applications.

Energy-harvesting wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have potential applications in battery-free wireless building automation systems, with more flexible implementation and operation, as well as reduced installation and maintenance costs. However, integrating an energy-harvesting WSN into an existing wired building automation protocol is not straightforward. The Building Automation and Control network (BACnet) is a wired building automation protocol, and EnOcean is an ultra-low-power wireless standard, which is optimized for energy-harvesting networks and uses different communication protocols. In this paper, we define three device categories in EnOcean networks according to the energy usage and discuss the implementation of a BACnet-EnOcean gateway to integrate an EnOcean energy-harvesting network with BACnet. Furthermore, we present a demonstration system for the BACnet-EnOcean gateway to verify that the gateway is both feasible and practical.