Sharif Digital Repository

In future smart grids, energy storage systems (EESs) and demand response (DR) are expected to have an important role in balancing load changes arising from life-style of consumers and varying output of some renewable energy resources. However, activating DR and installing ESSs need huge investment forcing system owner to justify their effectiveness prior to any implementation. This paper presents a model to find the optimal capacity of EESs in distribution systems with demand responding to electricity price changes. The model aims at maximizing system owner profit by lessening total electricity provision costs. The model is formulated as a mixed integer non-linear programming problem. Due to... 

The domestic heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning load promises a good prospect for electrical aggregators to consider it for demand response. This article presents a user-centric demand response control for scheduling the electric space heating load under a price and load uncertainty environment. The objective of the framework is to minimize a weighted sum of the expected payment, loss of comfort, and financial risk of a customer while strictly considering the end-user preferences. The household thermal behavior is modeled via an accurate two-capacity building model. The price and load uncertainty is modeled using a scenario-based stochastic programming approach. The proposed decision... 

In this paper, a multi-item economic production quantity model with fuzzy demand is developed in which shortages are backordered and the warehouse space is limited. While the demand is assumed to be a trapezoidal fuzzy number, the centroid defuzzification method is used to defuzzify fuzzy output functions. The Lagrangian relaxation procedure is first employed to solve the problem. Then, the model is extended to a constrained fuzzy integer nonlinear programming, in order to suit real-world situations. As the extended model cannot be solved in a reasonable time using exact methods, two meta-heuristic algorithms, named the genetic algorithm (GA) and the particle swarm optimisation (PSO) each... 

This research study presents an investigation on the behavior of a Pulsating Heat Pipe Flat-Plate Solar Collector (PHPFPSC) by artificial neural network method and an optimization of the parameters of the collector by genetic algorithm. In this study, several experiments were performed to study the effects of various evaporator lengths, filling ratios, inclination angles, solar radiation, and input chilled water temperature between 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., and the output temperature of the water tank, which was the output of the system, was also measured. According to the input and output information, multilayer perceptron neural network was trained and used to predict the behavior of the... 

This study developed and validated a lumped parameter model for the FLEXI-BAR, a popular training instrument that provides vibration stimulation. The model which can be used in conjunction with musculoskeletal-modeling software for quantitative biomechanical analyses, consists of 3 rigid segments, 2 torsional springs, and 2 torsional dashpots. Two different sets of experiments were conducted to determine the model's key parameters including the stiffness of the springs and the damping ratio of the dashpots. In the first set of experiments, the free vibration of the FLEXI-BAR with an initial displacement at its end was considered, while in the second set, forced oscillations of the bar were... 

This paper presents a simultaneous methodology for the optimal design of integrated water and energy networks. Heat transfer coefficients are not constant but are related to the velocity of the streams. Pressure drops in heat exchangers and related power costs are considered. The model is a non-convex MINLP (mixed-integer non-linear program) model, in which the objective is to minimize the total annual costs. To accomplish this task, a new superstructure is proposed that follows the energy and mass streams from sources to sinks, enabling us to consider heat exchange between streams in two separate stages of the HENS before and after mixers. Furthermore, heat recovery from wastewater is... 

Distributed generation (DG) units are increasingly installed in the power systems. Distribution companies (DisCo) can opt to purchase the electricity from DG in an energy purchase contract to supply the customer demand and reduce energy loss. This paper proposes a framework for optimal contract pricing of independent dispatchable DG units considering competition among them. While DG units tend to increase their profit from the energy purchase contract, DisCo minimizes the demand supply cost. Multi-leader follower game theory concept is used to analyze the situation in which competing DG units offer the energy price to DisCo and DisCo determines the DG generation. A bi-level approach is used... 

A capacitated location-multi-allocation-routing model is presented for a transportation network with travel times between the nodes represented by links on the network. The concept of multi-allocation arises from the possibility of allocating the population in a demand node to more than one server node. In normal conditions, travel time between two nodes is a fixed value. However, since the flow of population in a link can affect the travel time, here the impact of the population flow on link time is considered to be simultaneous. This way, distribution of the population over the network has a direct influence on the travel link times. It is assumed that all links are two-way and capacities... 

We study a capacitated multi-facility location-allocation problem in which the customers have stochastic demands based on Bernoulli distribution function. We consider the capacitated sub-sources of facilities to satisfy demands of customers. In the discrete stochastic problem, the goal is to find optimal locations of facilities among candidate locations and optimal allocations of existing customers to operating facilities so that the total sum of fixed costs of operating facilities, allocation cost of the customers, expected values of servicing and outsourcing costs is minimized. The model is formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem. Since finding an optimal solution may... 

Single floor facility layout problem (FLP) is related to finding the arrangement of a given number of departments within a facility; while in multi-floor FLP, the departments should be imbedded in some floors inside the facility. The significant influence of layout design on the effectiveness of any organization has turned FLP into an important issue. This paper presents a three- (two-) stage mathematical programming method to find competitive solutions for multi- (single-) floor problems. At the first stage, the departments are assigned to the floors through a mixed integer programming model (the single floor version does not require this stage). At the second stage, a nonlinear programming... 

Utilization of Unified Power Flow Controllers (UPFCs) can be more beneficial in the restructured power systems due to their capabilities in increasing the transmission line capacities as well as shunt reactive compensation. So, these devices should be installed such that the most benefit can be gained. In this paper, the problem of optimal placement of UPFCs is solved using Mixed-Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) method. Hence, the problem is completely formulated based on this method and is solved using available commercial solvers. The salient feature of this method is having potential to simultaneously determine the optimal location of multi UPFCs. Also, since a full AC Optimal Power... 

Wind power introduces a new challenge to system operators. Unlike conventional power generation sources, wind power generators supply intermittent power because of uncertainty in its resource. In a power system involved largescale wind power generation scenario, wind intermittency could oblige the system operator to allocate a greater reserve power, in order to compensate the possible mismatch between predicted and the actual wind power output. This would increase the total operation cost. This paper presents a new approach in fuzzy based generation scheduling (GS) problem using mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP). While the reserve requirements, load generation balance and wind... 

A microgrid (MG) is a small-scale version of the power system which makes possible the integration of renewable resources as well as achieving maximum demand side management (DSM) utilization. The future power system will be faced with severe uncertainties owing to penetration of renewable resources. Consequently, the uncertainty assessment of system performance is essential. The conventional energy scheduling in an MG may not be suitable for active distribution networks. Hence, this study focuses on the probabilistic analysis of optimal power dispatch considering economic aspects in a multi-carrier networked microgrid. The aim is to study the impact of uncertain behavior of loads, renewable... 

Resource allocation with quality of service constraints is one of the most challenging problems in elastic optical networks that is normally formulated as a mixed-integer nonlinear optimization program. In this paper, we focus on novel properties of geometric optimization and provide a heuristic approach for resource allocation that is much faster than its mixed-integer nonlinear counterpart. Our heuristic consists of two main parts for routing/traffic ordering and power/spectrum assignment. It aims at minimization of the transmit optical power and spectrum usage constrained to the quality of service and physical requirements. We consider three routing and three traffic ordering procedures... 

Implementing automation system in distribution networks needs a huge investment that usually cannot be funded entirely in a short period of time. So distribution companies (DISCOs) should develop long-term plans to equip their network with automation technologies as far as economically justifiable. Aiming to provide a methodology for development such plans, this paper presents a novel multistage planning model for implementing distribution automation system considering all main hardware and software infrastructures. The proposed method optimally determines the type, location, and time in which an equipment or infrastructure must be added to network considering the network capacity expansion... 

Calculation of camera projection matrix, also called camera calibration, is an essential task in many computer vision and 3D data processing applications. Calculation of projection matrix using vanishing points and vanishing lines is well suited in the literature; where the intersection of parallel lines (in 3D Euclidean space) when projected on the camera image plane (by a perspective transformation) is called vanishing point and the intersection of two vanishing points (in the image plane) is called vanishing line. The aim of this paper is to propose a new formulation for easily computing the projection matrix based on three orthogonal vanishing points. It can also be used to calculate the... 

This paper develops a reliability-based model for distribution network expansion planning (DNEP) studies. It incorporates the effects of distribution line maintenance in the planning studies to be considered as an alternative for the installation of feeders. To that end, at first, some models are introduced to effectively estimate the effects of maintenance activities budget on distribution lines' failure and repair rates. Therefore, the reliability data of distribution lines are updated in the reliability evaluation studies of distribution networks. Then, these models are involved in the formulation of DNEP problem which is introduced as a multi-objective optimization model. The developed... 

This paper studies a remanufacturing facility with several types of incoming nonconforming products and different independent remanufacturing workstations. The workstations have limited capacities so that an outsourcing strategy can be practiced. Each workstation is modeled with an M/M/1/k queuing system considering k as a decision variable. Additionally, a binary decision variable is taken into account to determine the contracting strategy along with some decision variables for the prices of remanufactured products. Thus, a bi-objective mixed-integer nonlinear programming is built to obtain optimal values of the decision variables. The first objective attempts to maximize the total profit... 

In future smart grids, energy storage systems (EESs) are expected to play an indispensable role in balancing continuous load changes arising from customers' life-style as well as varying output of intermittent energy resources. This, however, needs significant investment that should be justified prior to their implementation. This paper presents a model to find the optimal capacity for ESSs in distribution systems. The model aims at maximizing system owner profit by reducing total electricity procurement costs. The model is formulated as a mixed integer non-linear programming problem. Due to the complexity and large size of the problem, a decouplebased method is proposed wherein optimal... 

We provide a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model for a location-allocation-routing problem in a transportation network with links carrying the travel times among the nodes in the network. The travel time between two nodes is considered to be intelligent, that is, since the travelling population in a link can affect the travel time, here we consider the impact of the travelling population on the travel time of the link. This way, depending on how the population is distributed in the network, the travel times of the links may change. The problem is to find an optimal locations of server node(s), allocation of existing demand nodes in the network to the server(s) and allocation of...