Rubicon, the numbers have been presented before but I will summarize. If you have a 2 person golf cart, you can fit a 200 watt panel on the roof. At our latitude and given our climatic conditions, according to NREL, you can expect the panel to produce approximately 800 watt-hours per day, on average, assuming the cart was outside the entire day. This figure may be generous because the panel is flat on the roof and not tilted towards the sun.
SECO electric rates are approximately $0.13 per 1000 watt-hours (kWh). Therefore, if you left your golf cart outside all day, every day, the most you can save is approximately $40 per year, perhaps a little bit more depending on the efficiency of the AC/DC conversion in your battery charger. At approximately $1000 for the panel and components, there is no payback. As far as extending the range, the 800 watt-hours per day would be good for approximately 4-6 miles. If your cart was lightly used it is possible that you would not have to plug it in very often if you left it outside all day. However, you would still be spending on the order of $1000 to save $40 per year.
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Originally Posted by rubicon
jimbo: You are more familiar with solar then am I. However I bought a solar panel for my electric cart at a cost of $1400 installed and it wasn't much of a help?????
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