In the era of coal power station phase-out, natural gas fired combined cycle will drive the energy transition towards sustainable power generation. In a panorama of strong requirement for grid flexibility and non-dispatchable renewable penetration, the survival of a thermal power plant is strictly linked with operating successfully in compensating the renewable fluctuating production through flexible generation. The Italian case is taken as reference, considering that energy transition and renewable energy penetration may have similar effects also in different countries. In this direction, a test rig to investigate gas turbine compressor inlet conditioning techniques has been developed at the Tirreno Power laboratory of the University of Genoa, Italy. This is based on a Turbec T100 micro gas turbine (or microturbine), a Mayekawa heat pump and a phase-change material energy storage. The whole test-rig is virtually scaled up, through a cyber-physical system, to emulate a real 400MW combined cycle, with the heat pump governing the inlet conditions at the compressor. The microturbine is therefore used as the physical feedback for the system, whilst the steam bottoming cycle is simulated in real-time according to microturbine operation. The scope is to present the test rig and the procedure adopted to virtually scaleup a microturbine to a heavy-duty GT. the advantage of using microturbine for testing combined cycle flexibility options lays also on the possibility to make accelerated tests and to simulate multiple situations in compressed time windows.