Net-Zero Energy Communities (NZECs) are critical to assuring the sustainability and resilience of modernized power systems. In this paper, we present an open-source NZEC virtual testbed in Modelica based on a real NZEC in Florida, USA. A case study was also conducted where a building-to-grid integration control is evaluated where the results suggest that the tested control significantly smooths the power draw of the studied community and does not sacrifice thermal comfort to a great extent.
This article has been published under the title of “An Open-Source Virtual Testbed for a Real Net-Zero Energy Community” in the journal of Sustainable Cities and Society. For more information about this paper please visit this link.
This work is the result of extraordinary teamwork by multiple PhD students, Jing Wang, Yangyang Fu, Kathryn Hinkelman, and many other collaborators over a 6-year period. The first author of this paper, Dr. Huang, defended his thesis on "Model Based Technologies for Enhancing Building Operation” in 2016 and later joined the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as a scientist. He is a chapter author of the book "Building Performance Simulation for Design and Operation" and has published many papers in the field of building modeling and control. For more insight about Dr. Huang's scholarly work please click this link. Congratulations to Dr. Huang and the co-authors on their recent paper publication!
