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Facility sports solar flair
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Installing a solar power-generating system is expected to significantly lower the electric bill at The Island CC in Plaquemine, La. Photo by David McCallum |
David McCallum believes he’ll soon bid farewell to a certain dreaded monthly chore.
“Our goal is to never pay another electric bill,” says the Class A superintendent at The Island Country Club in Plaquemine, La., which recently invested nearly a quarter of a million dollars in a solar power-generating system for the building that houses its electric golf cars.
McCallum, a 23-year GCSAA member, didn’t like what he was seeing on those electric bills, especially when heavy golf car use forced him to charge the fleet during the pricey $5.12/kilowatt hour demand period (versus the nondemand rate of 9 cents/kilowatt hour). Neither did his new board chairman, Klein Kirby, who has an engineering background with experience in troubleshooting and energy conservation in the petrochemical industry.
“We are continually looking at ways of lowering operating costs and realized that the roof of our cart barn faces south, the ideal orientation for solar,” Kirby says.
For the project, the club brought in Gulf South Solar, a Louisiana company that had also completed the solar installation for actor Brad Pitt’s Global Green USA rebuilding project in New Orleans. But The Island CC installation was the company’s largest to date. The system uses 160 solar panels covering 3,000 square feet on the southward-facing side of the cart barn roof to generate 31,680 watts of DC power.
In addition to providing the buzz for the golf cars, the system also will provide supplemental power for heating water in the main clubhouse, golf shop, pool, and tennis and swimming clubhouse. It won’t be visible from the front of the clubhouse. Eventually, McCallum says, the facility may expand the system to include solar panels on the property’s five irrigation wells.
A quarter of a million dollars is a sizeable chunk of change for any operation, but both the federal and Louisiana state governments offer tax credits for converting to an alternative energy source. In addition, the cost of the solar system can be depreciated over five years, rather than the traditional 20, McCallum points out. And if the system should begin generating more energy than the facility needs, the power company is compelled by law to buy it back.
“We feel that in eight or nine years, we’ll be way ahead of the curve,” he adds. “Energy will only keep getting more expensive.”
On Oct. 4, McCallum will be hosting the Tour at his course — the American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Tour 2008, that is. The public is invited to see the area’s largest solar energy project to date.
Attracting wildlife to a golf course can boost its reputation as an environmentally friendly wildlife habitat and also potentially reduce insect pests. To lure purple martins to your course, Anthony Camerino, Ph.D., the commercial horticulture agent with the Harris County Office of Texas AgriLife Extension, recommends the following tips: The EPA met its requirements of the Clean Air Act earlier this year by signing the most stringent eight-hour standard ever for ozone, revising the standards for the first time in more than a decade, the agency says. The changes reflect the most recent scientific evidence about the effects of ozone, primarily the component of smog. The new standard is 0.075 parts per million, down from the previous standard of 0.08 ppm. |
