Rajeev Alasseri

Due to industrialization and an exponential increase in population, the demand for vehicles has increased in Kuwait. Utilizing fossil fuels to power vehicles that are in high demand has posed various environmental and medical implications. Considering the emission-free feature of electric vehicles (EVs), moving towards “EV readiness” is the need of the hour. This can be further enhanced by adopting alternative sustainable technologies such as photo voltaic (PV) charging of EVs, to potentially eliminate or significantly reduce the reliance on fossil fuel while simultaneously decreasing harmful emissions. As Kuwait does not manufacture cars, it imports all vehicles and their parts, including internal combustion engines (ICEs) and EVs. To find out the challenges to uplifting Kuwait’s “EV readiness” this study delved into the performance of a typical EV car in Kuwait’s weather conditions. This includes the investigation of parameters that influence the energy requirements in an electric vehicle, the change in the energy requirement in relation to several driving scenarios, and the efficiency of the EV battery. The results indicate that a significant amount of energy is being wasted for battery conditioning, which drastically reduces the distance covered during summer. The energy required for air-conditioning and battery conditioning are both positively correlated to the ambient temperature, while the time required to charge the battery has no relationship with the time of the day, traffic, or trip length. Additionally, the paper discusses some major challenges, such as lack of awareness, inadequate charging stations, and absence of policy. The paper recommends the most vital areas to be focused on for meeting the above challenges to make the transition to an “EV ready” state.

This paper depicts the results of a detailed energy audit, analysis, and implementation of energy efficient operations and maintenance strategies in a large commercial mall in Kuwait. Initially, the cooling towers (CTs) operated only at high speed, and on a typical summer day, nearly one-fourth of the make-up water was used for self-cooling of air. The study based on measured data and analysis, for a period of one year, revealed that the use of variable frequency drive (VFD) could reduce the water wastage for self-cooling of air by as much as 75% and overall water consumption by 18.6% while keeping the cooling system performance at the design level. An optimization model was developed, suitable exclusively for arid climatic conditions. Implementation of various energy efficient operation and maintenance strategies (EEO&MS) with ventilation and air-conditioning (VAC), and lighting systems obtained an overall reduction of 9879 MWh/y, equivalent to a percentage reduction of 11.7% in the annual energy consumption and a 345 kW in peak power demand. The study estimated an economical benefit of 19,958 KD/y for the owners and to the Ministry of Electricity and Water, in addition to a considerable environmental benefit of deduction in CO2 emissions by 6990 t/y.