Towards to the development of virtual testbed for net zero energy communities

As a step towards future energy smart cities, net zero energy communities (NZECs) attract international attention and can be important contributions to combat the global climate change. However, the complexities of the NZEC, derived from the interactions between the various subsystems and components of the community energy system, make the design and control of NZECs difficult. To address this problem, we propose to develop a virtual testbed based on Historic Green Village, which is a real NZEC located in Anna Maria Island, Florida. This paper first introduces the design of the virtual NZEC testbed and the hybrid thermal-electric energy system that serves the Historic Green Village. We then show the implementation of Modelica models for the ground coupled heat pump subsystem, which is a part of the hybrid system. We also present some preliminary simulation results of the ground coupled heat pump subsystem.