ELECTRIFICATION
By Rod Dickens
BATTERIES SPARK PRODUCT INNOVATION FOR THE FUTURE OF
MOW, BLOW AN Producing less noise and few emissions are among advantages to using battery-powered equipment to make companies “greener”
STIHL
I
woke up with a startle last Monday. I dreamt my two crew members were loading up our trailer with 16 robotic mowers to head out to a retirement community we had been maintaining for years. But instead of having three crews spend all day there, they were going to simply drive by our properties and essentially drop off a robotic mower, push a button, and return an hour later to pick it up. Imagine that, they were going to do that for nearly 100 accounts, with only two crew members. My employee
problem was solved. I didn’t need three trucks with trailers, nor did I have to carry extra fuel. Wait a second. Extra fuel? That’s what sparked my dream. I had just purchased a couple battery-powered string line trimmers and was looking forward to inserting a battery module instead of handling fuel, pushing a button instead of pulling a starter cord. Anyway, there’s no way, the industry would evolve to replacing employees with robotic mowers, or would it? Employing robotic mowers to completely replace crew members is likely years away, but battery powered equipment is rapidly finding a place on landscape maintenance trailers. This trend has been more than a decade in the making, and the catalyst was the transition from lead acid to Li-Ion (Lithium Ion) batteries. Greenworks introduced its first rechargeable hand tools in 2005 and has since developed a full line of both homeowner and commercial products. Within the last year, the company has added a rechargeable stand-on and zero-turn rider and an UTV to complement a line of rechargeable hand-held This edger is one of several STIHL battery products that has an external connection allowing operators to shift the battery weight from the unit to their back or hip.
14 GREEN INDUSTRY PROS
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MAY/JUNE 2019
equipment for the professional user. “Li-Ion batteries have more power, last longer, and charge faster than lead acid batteries and they don’t have a degradation of power,” said Greenworks Commercial Business Group Leader Tony Marchese. “They are smart, as well. Some of ours have Bluetooth capability, allowing users to check on things like battery life and the number of charges it has left. Those in our zero-turn mowers have the capability to locate a mower if it is stolen and actually make the battery inoperable.”
The rechargeable solution
Producing less noise and few emissions are among the most obvious advantages to using battery-powered equipment, which makes them attractive to towns and municipalities, colleges, corporate America and virtually anyone or company that wants to be “greener.” Marchese emphasized this equipment also has real pragmatic value for the professional user. “Now 500 cities have some form of regulation on two-stroke engines, that’s up from 250 a year ago,” he said. “Promoting your company as a green company with the capability to deliver all services with rechargeable equipment from blowers and trimmers to mowers can give you
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