EVALUATING THE ENERGY DEMAND AND SOURCES IN BALKAN COUNTRIES

Balkan region can be considered as a transition location between Europe and Asia.The area is reach in terms of water and forest resources. The countries that includeAlbania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia arenot energy reach countries in terms of energy resources and power generationtechnologies. On the other hand, these countries have increasing power and energydemand that should be balanced with cost effective, reliable and long termresources. Energy is accepted as a very important requirement for developing andunder-developed countries and its importance is increasing as the populationincreases and technology develops. The companies that have international capitalhesitate to invest in the region due to the problems with political and economicstability in the region. As a result of their geopolitical location, the region is in themiddle of energy transportation routes. Hence, this advantage can be used foreconomic benefit. Another important issue is the natural gas pipeline projects thatinclude nabucco and south stream that will pass through Balkan countries. Theseprojects bring some reliability and new opportunities for the economy of thecountries. The current electricity generation infrastructure in the region is old andusually coal based and hydroelectricity supported. In this research, the energystatus of the Balkan countries first presented and then the supply-demand growth ofenergy are analyzed to show the shortages, surpluses and dependency of thecountries

A Probabilistic Approach to Maximize Cross-Selling Revenues of Financial Products

Customer oriented approach and developing analysis for customers have become more important as the competition became a global issue, especially after technological advancements. Companies aim to sell more products to new customers and also to their current customers while keeping them in the portfolio and making sure that they are happy. Cross-selling of products and services to their customers is almost as important as gaining new customers. In this paper, a probabilistic and integrated method of cross-selling financial products is proposed. The proposed method first segments the customers based on the selected criteria and then calculates the probability of buying each product using product and customer relationship matrixes. Then, the expected yield for each group of customers and offer is calculated, and the best cross-selling strategy is determined. The proposed methodology is applied to a Turkish bank that aims to sell financial products through cross-selling. The results show that the methodology successfully determines the product order to be used in cross-selling in an effort to increase the success rate in the selling process and expected revenue

Forecasting Electricity Demand for Turkey Using Modulated Fourier Expansion

Turkish power market has undergone a restructuring and deregulation to reach a competitive and reliable electricity market. A typical day starts when the system operator announces the next day demand forecast for the electricity and participants submit offers in response to meet the demand. Accuracy in electricity demand forecast is essential for a reliable power system and successful market operation and mathematical models help market participants to forecast the electricity demand. We use hourly electricity demand data for Turkey, for the years 2012-2014 to make a linear model taking into account weekly and diurnal periodic variations modulated by seasonal effects. The model fits the data within %4 and predicts within %9.8 in the L2 norm

Agent-based Optimization to Estimate Nash Equilibrium in Power Markets

In most deregulated power markets, firms bid daily into a day-ahead power market. The auction mechanism, supply and demand, determine the equilibrium at each hour. In this environment, firms aim to maximize their revenues by carefully determining their bids. This requires the development of effective computational methods that help them estimate their competitors' behaviors under incomplete information. In this article an agent-based method that uses particle swarm optimization is described to simulate the behavior of market participants. Particle swarm optimization is used in the bidding process and an agent-based model is applied to find a Nash equilibrium. Different stopping conditions are used to determine the equilibrium. Experimental results are presented for two power systems

A method for volumetric visualization of temperature distribution: three-dimensional meshed infrared thermography

In this study, a method called three-dimensional meshed infrared thermography (3D MIT) was developed to visualize the volumetric temperature of air using an infrared camera. The main operating principle of the proposed method is to image the spheres using an infrared camera and processing the images with computer software to obtain the volumetric temperature distribution. For the correct implementation of the method, an equation is proposed to determine the distance between the thermal target and the measurement target placed in the flow to be examined. The proposed method was compared with conventional measurement screen methods, namely those using a plane target and a high-porosity target, via particle image velocimetry (PIV) in terms of flow effects. The temperature measurement capability of the proposed method is presented in comparison with the results of thermocouple and conventional measurement screen-based measurements recorded using a jet flow. In addition, the volumetric temperature isosurfaces obtained via the 3D MIT method of a jet flow were compared with the volumetric velocity isosurfaces obtained via the PIV method in terms of the flow structure

Prevalence of flat foot among elementary school students, in rural and urban areas and at suburbs in Anatolia

About 326 elementary school boys and 299 elementary school girls of an age ranging from 6 to 13 are included in this flat foot prevalence study. Results of the study are categorized in three groups, namely city centers, rural areas and suburbs. For the assessment of flat foot, footprint test is used. Prevalence of flat foot was 35.5% among girls and 28.5% among boys. Flat foot was associated with child age, residency and body mass index (BMI). Flat foot prevalence was highest among 6-year-old children, and lowest among 11-year and older children (P < 0.05). Flat foot prevalence was lower among children living in rural areas and children with low BMI value (P = 0.001). More overweight and at risk of overweight children had flat foot compared to normal and underweight children (P < 0.05). Familial predisposition was also noted for flat foot; 16.1% of children with flat foot had a familial history of flat foot, while this rate was only 5.6% in families of healthy subjects (P = 0.001). © 2010 Springer-Verlag

Numerical and experimental investigation of liquid blowing agent and pentane blowing agent effects on the insulation of a household refrigerator

Refrigerators are the most energy demanding household devices since they are working 7/24. Improving insulation material is crucial for reducing this demand. One of the promising ways to improve insulation materials is to develop better-blowing agents. In this study, the effects of Liquid Blowing Agent (LBA) and Pentane Blowing Agent (PBA) on whole refrigerator insulation were investigated by experimental and numerical methods. The thermal conductivities of the insulation materials were measured by the hot-wire method. The experimental results show that LBA has a 32.08% lower thermal conductivity regarding conventional polyurethane with PBA. These experimental results utilized as boundary conditions for CFD model of the refrigerator. The numerical analysis suggests that LBA can decrease the refrigerators' heat loss between 5.52% and 19.34%