Air-pollution-related issues, including the rise in carbon dioxide emissions, require, among others, solutions that include using electric vehicles supplied by the energy obtained from renewable sources. These solutions also include the infrastructure for electric vehicle charging. However, the existing systems mostly employ independent subsystems (such as subsystems for the control of electric vehicle chargers, subsystems for the control of smart battery storage, etc.), leading to hardware redundancy, software complexity, increased hardware costs, and communication link complexity. An architecture of a system for remotely controlling a renewable-energy-source-powered sustainable electric vehicle charging station, which overcomes these deficiencies, is presented in this paper. Consideration is also given to the sizes and combinations of different parts (renewable sources, batteries, chargers, etc.) for various purposes (households, replacing current gas stations, big parking spaces in shopping centers, public garages, etc.). The ability to integrate a wide range of features into one system helps to optimize the use of several subsystems, including the ones that control electric vehicle chargers remotely, smart storage battery remote control, smart electricity meter remote control, and fiscal cash register remote control, creating a sustainable and economically efficient solution. In this manner, consumers of electric vehicles will have easier access to renewable-energy-powered sustainable charging stations. This helps to reduce the amount of air pollution and its harmful effects, including climate change, by promoting the use of electric vehicles that are powered by renewable energy sources. The energy independence and sustainability of the station were considered in such a way that the owner of the station achieves maximum economic benefits.

A terminal for remote control of charging stations for electric vehicles (EV) powered by renewable energy has been presented in this paper. This terminal enables remote control of EV chargers, smart batteries, smart electricity meters, fiscal cash registers (FCR), as well as remote control of renewable energy sources and other devices within the station. This terminal also makes charging stations more accessible to electric vehicles users, to electricity distribution companies, to electricity suppliers, to tax administrations, and finally to users and owners of charging stations. Therefore, communication and control with all these devices and systems is integrated in one device. Realization of hardware and software of such a terminal has also been described in this paper. The net result of development and commercialization of terminals would encourage an increase in the use of electric vehicles powered by energy from renewable sources, which would cause a decrease in the level of air pollution and all negative effects it causes in the future. Different categories of this device are considered. Moreover, although it is a device with embedded software, a very advanced method was used, that is, a model-driven development method, which enables fast and more efficient development and maintenance of the device. The results of the application of this method to the terminal for remote control of fiscal cash registers are provided. They were compared with the results of the development of the terminal for remote control of smart meters without applying this method. A simulation of the development of the terminal for remote control of the station is also provided. The presented method can be used in the future for faster and better-quality development of embedded software.

Increasing the resolution of digital images and the frame rate of video sequences leads to an increase in the amount of required logical and memory resources necessary for digital image and video decompression. Therefore, the development of new hardware architectures for digital image decoder with a reduced amount of utilized logical and memory resources become a necessity. In this paper, a digital image decoder for efficient hardware implementation, has been presented. Each block of the proposed digital image decoder has been described. Entropy decoder, decoding probability estimator, dequantizer and inverse subband transformer (parts of the digital image decoder) have been developed in such way which allows efficient hardware implementation with reduced amount of utilized logic and memory resources. It has been shown that proposed hardware realization of inverse subband transformer requires 20% lower memory capacity and uses less logic resources compared with the best state-of-the-art realizations. The proposed digital image decoder has been implemented in a low-cost FPGA device and it has been shown that it requires at least 32% less memory resources in comparison to the other state-of-the-art decoders which can process high-definition frame size. The proposed solution also requires effectively lower memory size than state-of-the-art architectures which process frame size or tile size smaller than high-definition size. The presented digital image decoder has maximum operating frequency comparable with the highest maximum operating frequencies among the state-of-the-art solutions.

This paper considers power system flexibility in terms of a case study of electric vehicle charging stations powered by renewable sources. Aggregation of renewable energy sources and electric vehicle charging via remote terminals in market conditions is presented. The ability to aggregate a wide range of features into one system helps to optimize the use of several subsystems, including the ones that control electric vehicle chargers remotely, smart electricity meter remote control, and cash register remote control while receiving market information. Three scenarios of energy independence of the aggregator were analyzed: partial, optimal and maximum. The results show that all considered scenarios achieve a payback period of between 3.65 and 4.35 years, with the scenario of maximum energy independence providing the highest long-term profitability thanks to the increased export of electricity to the grid. The proposed approach contributes to a more efficient use of renewable resources and supports the economically sustainable decarbonization of the transport sector.