Solar Cart Savings Calculator
Explore the five-year operating benefit of replacing traditional lithium-battery carts with solar carts. Use your annual golfer rounds, local electricity rate and towing costs to build a transparent estimate.
Your solar savings dashboard
Year 1 cost savings, excluding labor capacity Total fleet charging savings in Year 1
Year 1 charging savings per cart/month Year 1 charging savings per cart/month
Year 1 towing labor value (redeployable capacity)
5-year total benefit, including labor capacity Total fleet charging savings over 5 years
Compared only with a traditional lithium-battery fleet. Estimates show gross avoided operating costs and the value of staff capacity freed, not guaranteed savings, net profit, ROI or payback. Purchase, retrofit, financing, taxes and any added solar maintenance costs are excluded. Realized savings depend on site conditions and which costs can actually be eliminated.
Projected operating benefit over 5 years
| Year | ChargingSavings | TowingEquipment & wear avoided | LaborCapacity value | Total benefitIncluding labor capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TOTAL5 years |
Five-year financial summary
- Charging savings
- Labor capacity value
- Towing equipment & wear avoided
- Cost savings, excluding labor capacity
- Operating benefit, including labor capacity
- Year 1 charging savings per cart/month
- Annual cart-rounds
- Cart-rounds per cart per operating day
- Baseline annual grid charging energy (kWh)
Annual cart-rounds = annual golfer rounds × cart-use share ÷ average golfers per occupied cart. At the defaults, 68,000 golfer rounds ÷ 1.54 golfers/cart gives approximately 44,156 cart-rounds. Cart-rounds per cart per operating day = annual cart-rounds ÷ fleet size ÷ operating days.
Year 1 charging savings = annual cart-rounds × kWh per cart-round × utility rate in cents/kWh ÷ 100 × solar charging offset. Fleet size affects per-cart results, not total course energy when annual rounds stay fixed.
Annual hours freed = daily towing staff-hours × operating days. Year 1 labor capacity value = hours freed × hourly wage including benefits. Count this as cash savings only when paid labor costs actually decrease.
For 90 carts: $40 wear per cart per year × 90 = $3,600, plus $300 towing hardware per cart × 90 ÷ 5 years = $5,400/year. Total: $9,000 in year one. You can override this fleet-wide annual allowance in Towing details; the edited amount scales with cart count. Overrides retain the wear/hardware proportions from baseline assumptions: wear increases by 3% annually by default and hardware stays flat. If both baseline components are zero, the override is treated as wear. These are planning allowances, not measured costs or cash rebates.
Year 1 uses today's inputs. Years 2–5 compound the selected annual utility, wage and wear increases independently. Annual rounds, operating days, solar offset, staff hours and fleet size stay constant. Hardware is annualized over its useful life, with no assumed resale proceeds.