Power exhaust is one of the critical issues for tokamak edge plasma research. Electron kinetic effects may play an important role in future fusion devices. The Kinetic Code for Plasma Periphery (KIPP) code was coupled to a 1D version of SOLPS with an iterative algorithm (Schneider R et al 2006 Contrib. Plasma Phys. 46 3; Braginskii S I 1965 Transport processes in a plasma Reviews of Plasma Physicsvol 1 (New York: Consultants Bureau) p 205) to study the kinetic effects in a systematic way. The KIPP–SOLPS coupling algorithm allows us to incorporate kinetic electrons into the already sophisticated fluid model (B2) self-consistently. The KIPP–SOLPS coupling simulation results with pure deuterium and with carbon impurity in 1D geometry with stagnation point upstream and target downstream are presented. These results are then compared to the results of SOLPS simulations with different flux limiters. It shows that non-local electron parallel transport contributes to the non-Maxwellian tails of electrons near the target which reduces the electron target temperature. However, the non-Maxwellian tail has negligible impacts on deuterium ionization.