The paper presents a heuristic approach to the problem of analog circuit diagnosis. Different optimization techniques in the field of test point selection are discussed. Two new algorithms: SALTO and COSMO have been introduced. Both searching procedures have been implemented in a form of the expert system in PROLOG language. The proposed methodologies have been exemplified on benchmark circuits. The obtained results have been compared to the others achieved by different approaches in the field and the benefits of the proposed methodology have been emphasized. The inference engine of the heuristic algorithms has been presented and the expert system knowledge-base construction discussed.

The demand for energy on a global scale increases day by day. Unlike renewable energy sources, fossil fuels have limited reserves and meet most of the world’s energy needs despite their adverse environmental effects. This study presents a new forecast strategy, including an optimization-based S-curve approach for coal consumption in Turkey. For this approach, Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Grey Wolf Optimization (GWO), and Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) are among the meta-heuristic optimization techniques used to determine the optimum parameters of the S-curve. In addition, these algorithms and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) have also been used to estimate coal consumption. In evaluating coal consumption with ANN, energy and economic parameters such as installed capacity, gross generation, net electric consumption, import, export, and population energy are used for input parameters. In ANN modeling, the Feed Forward Multilayer Perceptron Network structure was used, and Levenberg-Marquardt Back Propagation has used to perform network training. S-curves have been calculated using optimization, and their performance in predicting coal consumption has been evaluated statistically. The findings reveal that the optimization-based S-curve approach gives higher accuracy than ANN in solving the presented problem. The statistical results calculated by the GWO have higher accuracy than the PSO, WOA, and GA with R ² = 0.9881, RE = 0.011, RMSE = 1.079, MAE = 1.3584, and STD = 1.5187. The novelty of this study, the presented methodology does not need more input parameters for analysis. Therefore, it can be easily used with high accuracy to estimate coal consumption within other countries with an increasing trend in coal consumption, such as Turkey.