The sound of silence

Quieter electric equipment needs to overcome longevity issues to become more widely used

Silence is golden. And it might become a golden rule at more golf courses throughout the country as oil and gas prices soar and more municipalities and counties impose noise bans during early-morning hours.

Additionally, air-pollution regulations are driving researchers to come up with noncarbon power sources for equipment.

Electric golf carts and people carriers have been manufactured for some time. E-Z-GO manager of marketing and communications Ron Skenes says the company’s first golf cart, which was manufactured in the mid-1950s, was electric. But it wasn’t until the late 1990s before the first electric mowers were unveiled. Six years ago, Smithco released its E-star electric riding bunker rake and electric greens roller (model 09054).

Now it appears electric power, hybrids combining batteries with gas or diesel fuel and hydrogen fuel cells are the new frontier of maintenance equipment.

Currently on the market are:

• Jacobsen’s E-Walk walk-behind mower, E-Plex riding greens mower, and the Hauler 800E and Hauler 1000E utility vehicles;

• Toro’s E2050 Workman utility vehicle;

• John Deere’s 2500E riding greens mower, a hybrid gas or diesel-electric vehicle, and E-Gator utility vehicle;

• E-Z-GO/Cushman’s MPT (multipurpose truck) 1000 and MPT 800;

• Smithco’s E-star bunker rake; and

• Salsco’s greens roller.

“In the future, everything will be electric,” predicts agronomy consultant Terry Buchen of Buchen Golf Agronomy International in Williamsburg, Va. “I keep telling people to install more electric outlets to charge all this stuff. Almost all types of electrically operated maintenance equipment are being added – except fairway and rough mowers, and manufacturers are testing them, too.”

Sal Rizzo, founder and president of Salsco, also thinks electric is the future.

“I’m sure we need to get away from gas, oil and vibration because vibration, a by-product of gasoline-powered equipment, causes compaction,” he says.

Joe Zvanut, sales promotion specialist for Jacobsen, says the company is conducting a lot of research on hybrid and electric products.

“We’re looking into all types of technologies to help superintendents be more productive and improve performance,” he says. “We’re also looking into alternative power and fuel sources so they can better control their costs.”

Mike Koppen, group marketing manager for John Deere’s golf and turf products, says it’s a logical step to take the technology from greens to fairways and tees.

“The market is all going to go electric, depending on how far the technology advances go,” he says.

Those advances include fuel-cell technology. The Toro Co.’s Center for Advanced Turfgrass Technologies unveiled a hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered mower at the Golf Industry Show in Orlando, Fla., in February.

“We haven’t gone to market with it because we haven’t gotten to where the cost-value relationship needs to be,” says center director Dana Lonn. “We haven’t committed to any dates. It’s not the next golf show, but it’s not 10 years away, either. It’s a very active research-and-development project.”

Besides Lonn, only Steven Johnson of Smithco’s research-and-development team would reveal what their companies are working on with regard to electric equipment. For Smithco, it’s an electric greens roller that Johnson expects to come off the production line early in 2006.

Driving forces
In addition to the factors of noise and fuel costs, the transition to electric is being driven by savings on fuel, oil, belts, hoses, etc.; concerns about hydraulic leaks; man-hours saved; and the ability to begin work earlier in the morning in golf communities where houses line fairways and members demand quiet in their backyards.

“Ask any superintendent how much time is wasted turning off motors while golfers play through,” Buchen says. “If they had electric, they could keep working.”

“I told my old club that if I can get five hours of hands-on work a day out of my crew in an eight-hour day, we were doing good,” says Scott Johnson, CGCS at Cedar Creek at Shadow Glen in Olathe, Kan.

Johnson, who is in his second season using Salsco’s tournament roller, says he has greatly reduced the number of noise complaints from Cedar Creek homeowners.

Dave Herman, superintendent at Heritage Highlands Golf and Country Club in Tucson, Ariz., claims to be the first superintendent in the state to buy an electric utility vehicle – John Deere’s E-Gator.

“We start maintenance operations at 5 a.m. year-round,” he says. “The E-Gators are nice and quiet.”

But Herman is like many superintendents who are in the Twilight Zone of pragmatism when it comes to electric equipment. He has since switched back to a gas-powered utility vehicle because he says that after 15 to 18 months the batteries wouldn’t hold a good enough charge.

“They lived only half the three years I expected,” he says. “Deere replaced them at their expense. The benefits were great because they were quiet, but if we had to aerify or overseed and were working 12-hour days, we would only get six hours out of the E-Gators.”

Dean Miller, director of agronomy at the Club at PGA West in La Quinta, Calif., says there are many benefits to electric-powered equipment, but there are drawbacks, too.

“Once you get into bigger equipment and need more power, it’s harder to go electric,” he says. “They are required to do so much work.”

Miller feels there’s more of an opportunity for hybrid equipment, especially on golf courses, because they would be able to be used all day.”

David Court, CGCS at Boca Lago Country Club in Boca Raton, Fla., and his crew operate under a 7 a.m. noise ordinance. They use electric golf cars and utility vehicles, including a Carryall for spot spraying and cup changing. To beat the noise ordinance, he cheats a bit by going out 15 minutes early and uses more equipment operators to stay ahead of players who tee off from the first and 10th holes.

Court says electric equipment needs to last a little longer in the field – a good seven-hour day – to be more useable for him.

Down the road, Steve Wright, CGCS at Boca West Country Club, says he’s impressed with the way electric equipment has improved. But with 72 holes to care for, Wright says he has a large fleet of vehicles and it doesn’t make sense to buy two or three mowers to accommodate the noise ordinance.

Zvanut disputes the longevity question with the argument that changing the batteries on Jacobsen’s E-Walk and E-Plex is equivalent to refueling a gas-operated mower.

“The battery pack is easily removable, and sensors will shut off the reels when the battery power reaches a minimum level, leaving enough power to get the mower to the utility cart to replace the battery,” he says.

Rizzo says Salsco, which sells 36 models of rollers to six different industries, gets more than 18 holes per charge with its tournament roller. He says it’s 30 percent faster than a gas machine.

“We took an electric motor that was being used on a 5-ton forklift and used two on this roller,” he says. “We shot the squirrel with an elephant gun. We have two electric motors, one over each roller.”

Yet many superintendents find electric units fit their needs. Manufacturers are reporting increased interest from superintendents coast to coast.

“At first, it went off pretty big,” says Johnson of Smithco’s E-star 48-volt bunker rake. “We sold a lot of them. Then, for a time, they weren’t really moving. But sales picked back up again a year and a half ago.”

Johnson attributes slow sales to an intimidation factor but says that’s changing.

“A lot of people weren’t comfortable working with electric equipment, but they are more comfortable now and have a better understanding,” he says. “A lot of the new guys coming out of schools have an electrical background, and mechanics are a lot more diversified now and know more about electric circuitries and components.”

Herman laments the industry is still using the same batteries it has used in golf cars for years and says with longer-lasting battery equipment, electric equipment would be used extensively.

“If you could get to the point of having a jell battery so you didn’t have to worry about water at all, which is a big problem here in Arizona, that would make a world of difference,” he says. “But jell batteries are not deep-cycle.”

Lonn says more progress hasn’t been made because electric power is an emerging technology.

“There is a chicken-or-egg problem,” he says. “There are all kinds of people who make components to make a hydraulic machine for construction equipment. There are a lot of choices – a Home Depot full of many components. But when it comes to electric-powered products, the component choices are much smaller. Part of it is there are few applications. Because batteries have been so limited, there hasn’t been much work on controls to control them. We’ve had to set up our own components. We’re targeting applications where we think the biggest benefits exist and are looking at those as lead applications. From them, we will put them in other places.” GCN

Mark Leslie is a freelance writer from Monmouth, Maine. He can be reached at gripfast@ctel.net.