I've sort of been investigating this issue. I've found one solar mower with panels on it, but it is a solar hybrid. The other half was either gas or electric charge. The solar panel extended the life of each trip from 40 min to 110 minutes. Otherwise the feedback I'm getting is that panelling a mower oneself is really hard to get a decent anything. The solution I seem resigned to is get an electric mower and then panel up a shed with the panels and let the electric mower charge at its base there.
There was an article a few years back in either Backwoods Home magazine or Mother Earth News on switching a mower over to electric from gas powered. I can't remember which, but if you google them and ask about their archives I bet they can get you to it.
Wow, this is interesting stuff. I want to eventually, probably my retirement home, to be completely green and self sufficient. solar panels, etc. I want to live like that before I die.
This is a great idea but I guess the price for such a mower will be high. It will surely reduce the pollution produced but it will hurt my own pocket. I don't know if I will have spare money to buy such things when I retire.
What an awesome idea! I wish my husband was handy enough to come up with a way to make our mower (even the push one) solar powered. I bet in the next ten years this will become more common.
I agree. I'm totally captivated by this concept. Wouldn't it be terrific if there was a way to do this? A solar mower would be safer, too. I like this idea.
Where there's a will, there's a way, I'm sure. I have solar lights around my walkway, and the sun powers the batteries that power the small light bulbs on the bottom of the "cap". It shouldn't be to hard to apply that to your lawnmower.
Although this is such a great idea, I'm still not convinced about the practicality of this. I would buy this kind of mower if the battery can be used with other things and not only with the mower.
Well if you could figure out how to mount a large parabolic dish that would concentrate the sunlight into a spot, and put a water canister in that spot, you might be able to run a steam engine. :confused2::biggrin:
#11
nuffer460
Some where on the net, is a man that converted his riding mower to electric. I believe it was 36 volts. After converting the lawn tractor. He then installed three 12 volt solar electric panels to his shed / barn. He then wired the shed with an inverter to run some lights, etc... The batteries on the Lawn tractor was the storage device for the panels. When he was mowing the lawn. He turned the power inverter on an ran some lights, to keep the panels working. He reported that the tractor ran over 2 hours on a charge.
Well if you could figure out how to mount a large parabolic dish that would concentrate the sunlight into a spot, and put a water canister in that spot, you might be able to run a steam engine. :confused2::biggrin:
