Battery Power for Lawn equipment -- is it time?

But that isn't a fixed number. It's the energy stored in the battery divided by the actual power being used by the machine, which will be high when you are shoving it into heavy snow, low when you are turning around for your next pass, etc.

[QUOTE="Salamander_King, post: 3076644, member: 140530"The power of the machine will tell what depth and how far it can throw the snow.[/QUOTE]

The batteries are already rated; if you have two of the Ego 56 volt, 7.5 amphour batteries, you have 840 watthours to spend. If you are confident in your ability to estimate the power to throw x depth snow y distance, divide that into 840 for an estimate of your runtime (when throwing that depth of snow for that distance).

I think many people would be less confident in their ability to estimate that, and so are better served by Ego doing what they're doing, publishing the data in terms of a relatable amount of actual work done.

 

Correct. What I need to know is how long the charge will last without load as a reference point and with 8 inches (or whatever the depth it can handle) of light and heavy snow blowing. Only then, I can at least feel confident that the battery will last long enough for the job I am tackling. For my typical snow blowing job, I would run my 2 stage blower constantly for a good 45min to 1 hour to finish my driveway, and sometimes that has to be repeated every 3-4 hours.

 

From the many snows I've experienced, I'd think the density element would be a huge variable in the equation.

(Disclosure: my direct snowblowing experience is very minimal, having once cleared the driveway of a friend's vacation home. All the rest has been in merely watching snowblower trucks operating on public roads and highways. The farm road was handled with a blade under a Caterpiller label.)

 

Consumer Reports always does their snowblower tests with sawdust, because it makes a pretty useful control media for testing. Also it's available in the summer & fall, giving them time to prepare for publication within a single product season.

I hope they test this one against something familiar.

 

If anyone is interested, there is a zoom meeting this Wednesday about electric lawn equipment.
One of the people presenting uses an electric chainsaw on a daily basis.
Webinar Registration - Zoom

 

Each battery yard tool ecosystem has it's own gravity. A large part of this is to say, the cost to own more tools of the same brand decreases as one can simply buy the tool alone after acquiring 2-3+ (relatively expensive) batteries for that brand which are then shared among tools.

Different brands come with different varieties, costs, power, features, and qualities of tools. Some brands may not have a type of tool available at all that is of interest.

It's tough (costly) to justify buying into another brand and battery set when there are those one or two tools another brand has that are not available in ones current ecosystem.

 

Yes!

 

Looking for replacement NiCds, I saw Dewalt has a 18v nickel to 20v lithium for my 20 year old tools. Skipped on doing that as the generic packs were twice as much as the NiCd, and I would need to get a charger in addition to the adapter.

 

I was recently disappointed to discover that I can no longer buy replacement NiCd packs for a couple of harbor freight "chicago electric" hand tools I own.

And then discovered that I can buy same-voltage Porter-Cable packs and transplant the guts. Apparently everything except the terminal plate is the same.

 

With all the different suppliers for the Dewalt packs on Amazon, I'm surprised no one made one for the HF tools, they are a national chain. It is also possible to replace just the cells with soldering skills. Maybe even upgrade to NiMH. Just be sure to use power dense cells; most off the shelf consumer ones are energy dense. The cost and hassle may not be worth it for most though.

While NiCd and NiMH are mostly a drop in replacement for each other, there is a minor charging difference. Specifically in how automatic chargers tells that the pack is full. The method for NiCd can lead to shortening a NiMH's life. My Dewalt set was old enough that the charger was NiCd only, but they switched to NiMH later, with those chargers working for both.

 

For those keeping score, I've had the Kobalt line from Lowes in the 80V flavor for about a 18 months now: 21inch push mower, string trimmer, chain saw, and leaf blower. Got the mower first and slowly added the rest.

The leaf blower is so strong in "turbo mode" I now use it to quickly blow dry motorcycles and cars after a wash, clean out engine bays (leaves, spider webs) and even "rake" leaves under trees with it. I strongly considered going with their 60v blower model to save costs and weight but glad I didn't. The 80v is heavy tho' even with the lightest 2 amp battery. I need to come up with a shoulder strap solution as Kobalt doesn't offer one or even mount points for one. Something these battery powered units can do in spades over an ICE model: upside down operation. This feature adds more utility and ease-of-use than one might expect.

Our "monsoon" month is Sept. so the mower is working right now in the toughest part of the year but without struggle. It has yet to choke on tall thick St. Augustine grass that our previous 4.5hp ICE mowers would; even when mowing at a half-pass. 80v=torque baby!!

FWIW

 

I have the Kobalt 80v mower and the chain saw. Need to pick up the pole saw and the weed wacker to complete my set, but they are out of stock everywhere.

80v is killer. The mower works better than any gas mower I ever used, it eats up weeds like they're warm butter. Even if wet. I'm talking dense, thick, 2-foot tall stuff that hasn't been mowed in a while. My yard has more weeds than grass, especially in back where the dogs do their thing. I actually let it grow just to have more fun cutting it!

Can't say enough about the chain saw either. Not pulling a cord to start it is huge, but it also has power. Hoping the pole saw is just as good,
I have a LOT of high pruning to do.

 

Since the battery is not interchangeable across different brands, what tools to add will largely depends on which brand of the battery operated tool you buy first. In my case, since all of my cordless hand tools were Ryobi ONE+, I naturally bought Ryobi leaf blower and trimmer. But, I was so disappointed with the lack of power using their 18v battery. For small hand tools, 18V works fine, but for large yard work, they are very much under powered.

Now, after that I had to change to bigger battery 40V range for my chainsaw. And since I found Oregon Tool corded chainsaw worked so well, I jumped to their cordless battery operated version. Again, that was so much disappointment that cordless chainsaw was so much under powered than the corded cousin. But at this point, I already had one 40v battery and charger for Oregon Cordless Tools, so I had to buy next power tool I needed for that eco system. The second tool I added was trimmer, and this turned out to be the best lawn tools (gas or electric) I have ever bought. My wife uses it mainly, but it has so much more power than Ryobi ONE+. Only thing is that the additional battery cost $200. At that price tag, it is almost cheaper to buy a entire tool with a battery than just buy a battery. So, I am now looking at a pole saw and a lawn mower. But my feeling is that the lawn mower is going to be another under powered cordless yard machine.

 

Like we've learned about EV range; buy MORE than you (think) need.

 

The problem is there is no EPA standard for calculating the metric for comparison shopping cordless power yard tools. EV range is well standardized metric, how powerful and how durable the cordless lawnmower is going to be mostly not known until I buy one and use it.

 

True dat!

Great idea for a consumer reports type website.

 

Well, I found and ordered one!
Tomorrow it is scheduled to be delivered

Not that I am hoping for a heavy snow this winter, but....

 

Let us know how well it handles 8+ inches of snow in sub zero temperature.

 

Well, the first gen handled that quite well.
I’m looking for 14” of wet snow and ice.

 

yeah, even my decrepit 62 year old back has no problem using a shovel with 8+ inches of snow in subzero temps. That stuff is loose, dry and light. it's the wet heavy stuff near freezing that is the worst.