A kernel P system integrates in a coherent and elegant manner some of the most successfully used features of the P systems employed in modelling various applications. It also provides a theoretical framework for analysing these applications and a software environment for simulating and verifying them. In this paper, we illustrate the modelling capabilities of kernel P systems by showing how other classes of P systems can be represented with this formalism and providing a number of kernel P system models for a sorting algorithm and a broadcasting problem. We also show how formal verification can be used to validate that the given models work as desired. Finally, a test generation method based on automata is extended to non-deterministic kernel P systems.