Hello,
and thanks for reading my 'How to Make a Solar Powered Lawn Mower.' I
didn't take any pictures of it when I was building it, as I was to busy
building it. I hope you will enjoy this Instructable and get some good
ideas on your own project.
Step 1: The battery
So
one night I was walking to my house and a neighbor was throwing out an
old cordless lawn mower. Sweet! But there was a catch, batteries where
toast. Why you may asked? Over changed from the wall changer caused the
battery to swell and crack. The two bad battery's that where in the
lawn mower where 12v, 10ah and need to be replaced. I made a decision to
replace the old battery's with the same capacity batteries to fit in
the removable battery.
Step 2: Everything I needed
So
for a long time I wanted to make solar powered lawn mower. I already
have a solar panel mounted outside from another projects. My solar
panel is a 12V 500ma solar panel I got from eBay. I also have a solar
changer controller that works with my battery's I picked up for a kit.
KEEP IN MIND
I was hoping I could recharge my two battery's in parallel but keeping them in series but it won't work. Unless you broke the series circuit before wiring them in parallel and then breaking the parallel circuit when you want series circuit, if not, a short will happened.
KEEP IN MIND
I was hoping I could recharge my two battery's in parallel but keeping them in series but it won't work. Unless you broke the series circuit before wiring them in parallel and then breaking the parallel circuit when you want series circuit, if not, a short will happened.
Step 3: To recharge
To
prevent a short I have two pig tails coming from the removable battery,
for each battery. To recharge the removable battery I plug my solar
panel and solar battery charger controller to one of the pig tail and
wait for the controller charge LED turns green. Once one battery is
fully charged I switched over to the other battery until the solar
change controller LED turns green.
When I got the new batteries I had to remake the connections to add the pig tails for the solar panels. Other than that this was the hardest part to make as the battery area was pretty small from the start and adding more wire didn't help.
Something I should add is that gel cell battery's can't take a high change current. A while ago I have read online article that was taking about the change current on sealed gel cell. The article said that the change current for a gel cell battery shouldn't be anymore then {C/20 = change current} where C is the capacity of the battery. so for me my 10 amp hour battery should have a maximum change current of 500ma and I do.
When I got the new batteries I had to remake the connections to add the pig tails for the solar panels. Other than that this was the hardest part to make as the battery area was pretty small from the start and adding more wire didn't help.
Something I should add is that gel cell battery's can't take a high change current. A while ago I have read online article that was taking about the change current on sealed gel cell. The article said that the change current for a gel cell battery shouldn't be anymore then {C/20 = change current} where C is the capacity of the battery. so for me my 10 amp hour battery should have a maximum change current of 500ma and I do.
Step 4: All together
The
battery takes about 2 to 3 days to fully recharge and it can fully mow
my lawn with battery capacity to spare about 50%. In this picture you
can see I have two solar panels connected to the removable battery. The
two solar panels are electrically separated so there isn't any risk of
the a short circuit. If I use the two solar panels the recharge time is
about a day and a half.
Step 5: Thats it!
Thank you for reading my Inscrutable I know it's not as very helpful , but it's all I had and one day it might help somebody.
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