The Buzz
Solar-powered lawn tractors offer obvious environmental and economic advantages, with recyclable batteries, more efficient motors, excellent traction and much lower costs for fuel and maintenance. Edmond Electric Company, in Canada, plans to manufacture solar lawn tractors first for the European market (under the Lawn Boss brand), then for the United States. Unfortunately, they've discontinued the gasoline-to-solar conversion kit mentioned in an article in Mother Earth News: http://www.electriclawntractor.com/
Free Power Systems, which already makes a solar lawn mower and solar tiller, is also developing a solar walk-behind lawn tractor: http://freepowersys.com/
Mother Earth News reports that the U.S. Department of Agriculture funded a solar lawn tractor conversion project in New York state, for which Ron Khosla converted two old gasoline tractors to solar at a cost of about $1,325 each. The two tractors not only take care of a 13-acre community-agriculture farm, but also have enough battery power left over to power the produce cooler and an entire house. As part of the grant, a complete instruction manual is available online for converting tractors to solar power, under "Hug Farm Innovations": www.flyingbeet.com/electricg
Though these are the latest solar lawn tractors, they're not the first. A good overview of current and historical electric and solar lawn mower and tractors is available here: http://www.econogics.com/ev/evtools.htm
:tiphat:
http://www.consumersearch.com/www/lawn_and_garden/lawn-tractors/review.html
Solar-powered lawn tractors offer obvious environmental and economic advantages, with recyclable batteries, more efficient motors, excellent traction and much lower costs for fuel and maintenance. Edmond Electric Company, in Canada, plans to manufacture solar lawn tractors first for the European market (under the Lawn Boss brand), then for the United States. Unfortunately, they've discontinued the gasoline-to-solar conversion kit mentioned in an article in Mother Earth News: http://www.electriclawntractor.com/
Free Power Systems, which already makes a solar lawn mower and solar tiller, is also developing a solar walk-behind lawn tractor: http://freepowersys.com/
Mother Earth News reports that the U.S. Department of Agriculture funded a solar lawn tractor conversion project in New York state, for which Ron Khosla converted two old gasoline tractors to solar at a cost of about $1,325 each. The two tractors not only take care of a 13-acre community-agriculture farm, but also have enough battery power left over to power the produce cooler and an entire house. As part of the grant, a complete instruction manual is available online for converting tractors to solar power, under "Hug Farm Innovations": www.flyingbeet.com/electricg
Though these are the latest solar lawn tractors, they're not the first. A good overview of current and historical electric and solar lawn mower and tractors is available here: http://www.econogics.com/ev/evtools.htm
:tiphat:
http://www.consumersearch.com/www/lawn_and_garden/lawn-tractors/review.html
That's the great thing about a tractor.
You can't really hear the phone ring.
Jeff Foxworthy
You can't really hear the phone ring.
Jeff Foxworthy
