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SOLAR ASSISTED GOLF CART
 

Golf cart outside Nadd-Al-Shiba clubhouse.

"This plucky little number won't win any days at the races - but then again, it might just surprise you..."

- TOP GEAR'S Jeremy Clarkson (never said this)
 

This was one of our first projects carried out in 1994 basically to give us some practical experience of installations and to create attention and publicity for solar power and our newly formed company, which it achieved admirably.

We needed a decent project other than the radio controlled models we had done earlier so when we were approached by Dubai Golf & Racing Club if a solar powered golf cart was feasible a few rapid calculations proved it was not. Using the whole roof of the golf Cart would only give about 10% of the power needed to fully charge the cart batteries daily. Normally the carts completed two rounds daily, however, on busy days the carts had to complete three rounds and had a habit of running out of power in the last few holes of the third round. A solar roof could give the additional power for this not to happen.

Solarex Electric made the lightweight glassless modules specifically for the project. As the battery is a 36 volt 220 Ah Trojan (6 x 6 volts) arrays of three 12 volt modules in series were required. A total of 12 modules, each 36 cell, rated at 800ma were used in 4 parallel arrays i.e. a peak potential charging current of 3.2 amps or around 18 amp hours per day @ 36 volt. The aluminium frame was built by Standard Fabricators of Dubai who kindly donated this. Assembly took a few days and an amp meter connected so that each of the four arrays could be checked independantly. The system functioned OK for a few weeks and created considerable attention including the local media. Many golfers specifically requested the solar cart with the result it was doing three rounds daily and although there was little spare capacity it never to our knowledge ran out in sight of the clubhouse on its third round.

After a couple of weeks the first accident occured. On checking the arrays only two were operating the cart had been driven into a low building and the additional height of the roof caused it to collide with overhead racks cracking cells in two of the semi flexible glassfibre backed modules, subsequently what appears to have been a direct hit by a golf ball or stone did this to a third module. The damaged modules were replaced with spares but this was becoming an expensive excercise and clearly a change in design was required. We considered Uni-Solar modules but their largest module available at the time was 22 watts as their tripple junction technology was not available and the roof could only accomodate three so only about half the power would have been available. The roof was removed after 6 months and used for our first solar powered boat which operated in Mina Sayehi at the headquarters of Dubai International Marine club on Earth Day in 1995. The boat worked well other than a steering problem caused by placing the motor too centrally, a fault not apparent in swimming pool tests. However our current webmaster spent several hours steering an irregular course throughout the harbour area

Both the cart and the boat were useful for us being amongst the first installations we carried out and leasons learned are to be incorporated into our next boat project, hoped to be completed in late 1998.