what i want to do would be to start a lawn company that is basicly 100% green or as close to it as i can. my thoughts are to have every thing electrice. weed eaters, lawn mowers, edgers, hedge trimmers im not sure how im going to go about it but i was thinking of a few ways to do this.
#1 build a solar set up with a big battery bank in the back of a truck to make it moble and plug every thing into the battery bank
#2 would be to build a solar set up on a truck and use it to charge the batteries that come with the tool and just have alot of batteries
i like the idea of being able to plug in or use a battery im not sure why all the battery powered tools are not electrice also
im going to have to gather alot more information but any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
100% green might look like sickles, scythes, spades and shears. human power. supplement it with a small herd of goats and llamas. it would be quiet, clean, and completely renewable.
batteries are really the weak link in 'green' power. they are toxic, inefficient, and cumbersome. I have been living off-grid for the last 8 years, and my experience is that photovoltaic itself, is great. if the sun is shining, and you can take the power straight into your tool, it is a beautiful thing. but trying to store large amounts of power, particularly to utilize fairly conventional tools, is not so good. on a good day, you lose 30% efficiency moving the electricity from a solar panel to a battery and back to a tool. if you are trying to store the power for long periods of time, such as through a cloudy week, it sure seems like the efficiency plummets. driving around a sizeable enough bank of batteries is no light load, those 6 volt L-16 batteries weight a good 60 pounds each. to run a landscaping crew would take a lot of batteries, which is basically a lot of lead plate and battery acid. additionally, if you want your system to last more than a year, you really cant be draining your batteries down under 50%. so you need to double, or even triple the anticipated size of your battery bank. it becomes cost prohibitive, and impractical to transport. goats on the other hand....
I really think we need a reconsideration of 'green'. a lot of things are called green when they are really just shifting the pollution from one form to another. until efficient and non-toxic batteries are invented, we are just 'greenwashing' our alternative power ambitions.
Post by:autobot
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