Rather than writing a super long blog post, I decided to try a new presentation format for this project: a video.
Featuring custom-designed power electronics, batteries imported on a ship from China, and me trying my hand at mechanical engineering, this is the epic story of how a mundane 20 year old machine was made into a fast, powerful all-electric prototype, that makes regular petrol-powered equipment look a bit antiquated.
To be fair, the starting point wasn't 100% mundane. Many electric conversions have been done before, but I started with an Australian-made Greenfield ride-on mower: simple, robust, designed to be repaired and last a long time, and to do difficult work more efficiently than other machines (and efficiency is really important when you're running on batteries). To my knowledge this is only the second electric conversion of a Greenfield mower in the world - and the first to do so using modern Lithium-based batteries and brushless motors, and to eliminate the original belt-drive and clutch system, and thereby increase the top speed of the machine... significantly.
It's also exceedingly rare to see an electric conversion project of any sort which is both mechanically and electronically involved: i.e. both mechanically modifying the machine to install electric motors, and developing all the electronics (motor controllers and charging systems) from scratch. It was a lot of work, but being me... I had to. There was a lot of value in that for me. And it's much more fun driving around on the thing knowing exactly what goes into making the motors spin.
The video shows most of the build process and a sample of the motor controller development - I've written about that in more detail here - as well as demonstrations of the (un)finished product and various other shenanigans. The battery and charging system for this project is basically the energy storage system I developed previously. This is all still a work-in-progress, and I'll post more in due course.
You can watch the video on YouTube below!
I've also made a second (more recent) video demonstrating the comparison between my electric-converted prototype and its petrol-powered nemesis. This is interesting because the side-by-side shows what's really been achieved and proven with this project, and shows the potential of electric equipment and decarbonisation of this sector in the future.
When I'm not busy doing PhD research, building world-first electric equipment prototypes, driving said prototypes dangerously or scoping out fallen powerlines in the bush, I get up to all sorts of exciting things, like... eating, and... sleeping... and writing my blog... sheesh. I promise I actually do have a life here somewhere.
None yet!
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