Fundamentals
Lithium Fundamentals For Golf Carts
“Published October 2022 in CGSA (Canadian Golf Course Superintendents) Green Masters Magazine “
The Status Quo
Electric carts have already replaced gas in many places. Roughly speaking, they cost about 1/10th per km to operate, require much less work (especially if you exclude the Lead-Acid batteries), and if you trade them in after five years anyway, most Courses are happy with them. Let’s begin our journey by looking at Lead-Acid battery characteristics, then compare them to Lithium. Here is a graph from the US Battery User Manual. Have a look.
Cycle life in relation to depth of charge.
Briefly stated, what this shows is the less you drain a Deep-Cycle battery, the longer it lasts. With minor differences, manufacturers claim that discharging to no more than 50% Depth of Discharge (DOD), you should be able to run a cart around 1,200 days/cycles. You probably already knew this.
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