Fabrication and Performance Evaluation of a Solar-operated Lawn Mower

Abstract

The use of the sun’s abundant solar energy has become necessary due to the steadily rising expense of fuel and the impact of burnt fuel’s emission entering the atmosphere. The general concept of mowing was used to design and development of a solar-powered lawn mower. The solar-powered lawn mower consisted of a direct current (DC) motor(12V-21000RPM), a rechargeable battery (12V-9A), a solar panel (30W), a solar charge controller (10A), a stainless-steel blade, and a control switch. The Performance study of the designed machine was conducted using varying blade thicknesses and varying cut heights. The machine was found to have a maximum field efficiency of 88.13 % when using 4 blades with 0.5 mm blade thickness and 45 mm height of cut and minimum field efficiency was 72.75 % when using 2 blades with 1 mm blade thickness and 15 mm height of cut. The maximum effective field capacity of the mower was 0.02769 ha/hr with 0.5 mm blade thickness and 45 mm height of cut and the minimum effective field capacity was 0.02286 ha/h with 1 mm blade thickness and 15 mm height of cut. The fabrication cost was $71.89. The average effective field capacity of the machine was found 247.64 ㎡/h, Field Efficiency 78.82% and cutting efficiency was 98%. The cost of cutting operation was 0.0019 $/㎡. It revealed that mowing by the solar lawn mower was almost 3 times faster and more cost-saving than manual mowing.