Design and Fabrication of a Solar-Powered Lawn Mower

This paper presents the design and fabrication of a solar-powered lawn mower for operational convenience. It was made with a solar panel of 40 W capacity, which charges the battery of the mower. The solar panel is connected in series to an improvised charge controller that serves to prevent complete discharge or overcharge of the battery. The lawn mower has its cutting blade attached to an 80 W, 12 V DC induction motor, driven by 12 V, 45 AH lead accumulator connected in series. The DC battery (lead accumulators) is recharged using solar energy harnessed by the solar panel. Detailed design of the solar components was made and the test performance gave an effective field capacity of 1.68 m2/min which demonstrated the ease of use as well as neat mowing of the grasses. The blade height was fixed at a height of 20 mm which is used as the desired height of the cut. It was deduced that the battery which was charged for approximately 2 h is capable of mowing the grasses for 3 h or more and 99.9% efficiency was achieved with the operation.