TURF MANAGEMENT
Unveiling the cost of Electric turfcare machinery
here will always be a role
T for both petrol and diesel machinery , that goes without saying , but what we ’ re seeing is a spearheading in the journey of electricpowered machinery . Here Reesink UK , sole Toro distributor in the UK for golf and sports fields equipment and irrigation products , considers the comparisons and crunches the figures about the true cost of ownership of electric turfcare machinery .
There are two sides to consider : the ownership cost and the operating cost , i . e . the cost of buying and keeping a machine in the fleet versus the costs of fuel , maintenance , repairs , tyres and parts .
The purchase price is much less of a consideration as a lower purchasing cost may suffer from higher maintenance costs and vice-versa . The cost of ownership allows you to work out not just the costs , but the profits from the machine – something easily achieved by working out production , cost-per-hour and cost-per-unit .
Ownership costs decrease the more hours the machine works while operating costs work the other way around . At one point , these two values combined produce the lowest total cost per hour , making up the ‘ economic life ’ of the machine ( this is different from its ‘ physical life ’).
Calculating the figures
Electric turfcare equipment is powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries and the electricity required to charge them is less than most people think – between 35 and 120 volts . It ’ s easy to track how much energy is consumed from the batteries via the info centre and knowing the cost of a unit of kWh will enable the calculation to work out how much it costs to charge .
If we look at an electric-powered greens mower with a fully charged battery pack ( 10.77kWh ) that uses 70 percent of its energy to cut all 18 greens , then around 7.5kWh is taken from the batteries . Most chargers are
The all-electric Greensmaster eTriFlex 3370 is ideal for cutting sports surfaces . Here it is in action at Southampton Football Club where two machines are being used as the main cutting units for the nine pitches at the Staplewood training ground .
14 GroundskeepingJournal . co . uk | March / April 2023