By Derek Spellman
dspellman@joplinglobe.com
NEOSHO, Mo. — Shane Bennett has seen the future, and it is sunny.
Bennett is the president of Sol-Stainable Technologies, which converts ordinary electric golf carts into solar-powered carts. It was started last year by Bennett and three other fellow Crowder College students.
The four students are alternative-energy apostles trying to secure a niche in an emerging industry.
“It is getting more and more popular,” Bennett said. “You couldn’t find anybody doing it six months ago.”
Solar power has gained ground as an alternative energy source for cars and houses, but now businesses such as Sol-Stainable Technologies are showing how solar power can also be harnessed for smaller, less expensive applications.
With current technology, a solar-powered car can reach speeds of 105 mph and be driven on the highway, but it also costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.
By contrast, the solar golf carts that Sol-Stainable Technologies can provide might reach speeds of 15 mph but cost far less. Bennett said that the company can convert an existing cart at a cost of about $2,500 and with a turnaround time of less than a week, depending on the model.
The most immediate market would be golf courses, but Bennett and his partners also plan to promote the machines as a convenient and energy-efficient transport for retirement communities, theme parks, casinos, school campuses and large rural properties.
Sol-Stainable Technologies is partly an outgrowth of Crowder College’s solar energy programs, Bennett said.
Bennett credits Art Boyt, director of Crowder’s Missouri Alternative and Renewable Energy Technology (MARET) Center, with inspiring the operation.
The first solar car to cross the United States was built under Crowder’s guidance, he said, and Boyt was one of the pioneers in the field.
Years later, some of his students — including Bennett — began to see how a golf cart was well-suited for solar power. Its canopy, for example, provided a flat surface that was good space for solar panels.
The key advantages of a solar cart, Bennett argued, is that its primary energy source — i.e., the sun — is virtually inexhaustible and free.
Bennett estimated that a cart could travel anywhere from six to 10 miles a day on solar power. In some cases, the carts could operate for months without ever needing to be plugged in and recharged, he said.
Other features planned for the company’s products would allow a laptop, cooler, radio or portable television set to be plugged into the cart.
And Sol-Stainable Technologies also plans to tout the carts as an excellent backup power supply, particularly for ice storms.
The cart can store energy, Bennett said, that can be accessed via a converter. The applications would be somewhat limited, but the cart could be used to power a small heater, television set or cooler for one to two days, he said.
Sol-Stainable plans to highlight all of those features when it takes its product into the marketplace. So far, business has been in a bit of a holding pattern because of the cold weather, but as winter yields to spring and business quickens at the golf courses, Bennett and his partners expect that to change. It will be sending out dozens of introductory letters to area businesses within the next few weeks.
“We plan on getting pretty aggressive come spring,” Bennett said. “We really want to support local businesses because we are (a local business).”
Did you know?
Sol-Stainable is the first business to use the small-business incubation services offered by Crowder College’s Missouri Alternative and Renewable Energy Technologies program.
