Building a solar house in KISR would allow the researches to have principles on how to build buildings that can consume less energy in the future. KISR built a solar house back in 1978, to use it as a laboratory for examining, testing and evaluating the solar heating and cooling and the solar photovoltaic system. The whole solar system assembled in 1979.
This project considers an amazing transfer in projects related to solar cooling in Kuwait. KISR researchers went from the solar house testing laboratory to apply it in buildings that requires multiple demands and a large consumption of energy. The area of the kindergarten was 710 m2 and 550 m2 of that space was used for air conditioners. KISR installed 90 solar water-heating collectors and the total area of the collectors was 360 m2 Additionally, KISR installed hot water and cold water storages.
KISR has studied the feasibility of utilizing solar power for multistage flash desalination. A pilot station was established which was able to achieve a production rate of 45L of water for every square meters of installed solar capacity.
The administrative office building was built to save the energy and reduce the consumption of it. Also, the design of the building was suitable to mount and install solar energy technologies for heating and cooling. The building was finished with mounting solar energy technologies in 1983 and the area of the building was 710 m2 and 53 m2 was consumed by the air conditioning system. KISR installed 172 solar water-heating collectors and the total area of the collectors 300 m2 In addition, KISR installed hot water and cold water storages.
KISR in a joint project with the public authority for transportation launched a project to install 3 solar power stations to serve as backup for traffic light power. The system will project the designated lights with up to 12 hours of off grid operation.
The first solar furnace in Kuwait was constructed in KISR in 1984, and it reached a maximum temperature of 1600°C, which allowed it to be utilized to enact certain chemical reactions, and gas separation.
KISR has installed a photovoltaic system for lighting of the nursery section of the English school of Kuwait in 1984. The system generated up to 23.2kW with a storage capacity of 200kWh.
KISR has built a solar laboratory with 2.6 kilowatts of solar panels. It was used to test the performance of solar panels and their impact on climate change. It is also used to study auxiliary components of solar systems such as batteries and transformers.
The Sulaibiya solar thermal power plant is located in Kabd, 40 kilometers south side of Kuwait city. The main objective of this power plant is to depend main the solar energy as the source for electricity production, water desalination an agriculture. The outcome of the objective will make this power plant the main research center for solar energy in remote areas. The solar thermal power plant will produce 100 kW of electricity and 530 kW of heat for water desalination for drinking and agriculture and for other uses.
A first solar resource assessment was carried out by KISR in 2010 to generate solar irradiance and other related meteorological data. The reported data, although useful, was generally incomplete, not quality assured and had too large uncertainties to design solar power plants.
KISR did Resource assessment based on both ground-based observations and extensive satellite- based modeling, with five radiometric stations. Creating database and solar resource maps for Kuwait.
KISR has conducted research to develop a strategy that utilizes renewable energy as a main source of energy production in Kuwait. This strategy has established different scenarios of renewable energy share of the total production, studying the impact of each scenario. The impact study included environmental and economic aspects, and concluded having 15% renewable shared as a target for 2030.
KISR managed to establish the national test platform for grid-connected PV system. This laboratory is currently hosting 26 systems, 24 systems consisting of 8 PV technologies and 3 inverters, and two concentrated PV systems (CPV), one installed in urban environment and the other in the desert environment.
Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) took the initiative to develop the Shagaya Renewable Energy (RE) Park which is considered as a globally unique in term of variety of RE technologies used in one park. Shaqaya RE Park contains three types of RE technologies, Photovoltaic (PV), Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), and Wind Energy (WE) with a gross capacity expected to exceed 4 GWe. The project will be built in three phases where the first phase was constructed by KISR as a pilot plant to verify the feasibility of investments in renewable energy. The remaining two phases are open for local and international investors.