I for one am really excited. I did not do very well in science in school. In fact, I stopped taking science after grade 9. So I don’t understand how solar panels work at all. This fear of the unknown did make me a little apprehensive about me putting this solar charging station together by myself.
The good news? Well, I was able to do it after only 2 hours sleep! The night before I was out on the west coast of California and took the ‘red eye’ (overnight) flight back east. I don’t know about you but I never get any sleep on those flights. But, I digress 
OK, the first (of many) picture below shows all of the components of the solar charging station laid out on our back lawn. The two metal parts (at the top of the picture below) which look like a weird ‘Z’ are to be attached to the charger station itself (which is at the bottom of the picture). The small boxes on the extreme left and right each contain one of the batteries. And, the white thing in the middle is the underside of the solar panel, measuring 16 and 3/4 inches by 18 inches.
Now, notice the two holes in the top and lower black horizontal frames in the above picture. These are used to affix the panel to what ever you want to place it on. However, you are not required to affix the panel to anything. Per the manufacturer’s customer service, some customers apparently move the panel during the day to get more sun light. That’s a bit too much work for me (my wife’s husband can be a bit lazy ) so I will be fixing it to something.
While the instructions say to place the solar panel at a 45 degree angle to gain the most direct sun light I decided to have the solar panel lay flat on the top of this small deck box.
Now, I do have to be honest, because at the end of the day if one does not maintain one’s integrity then what does one have (not to get too philosophical). The manufacturer needs to improve two things to make the installation easier: (A) more detailed step by step installation instructions (I guess that where Daily Home Renovation Tips come in ) and (B) supply all of the tools needed to put this together.
If they would have simply supplied a flat wrench to assemble the part which will affix the solar panel to the flat or angled surface and if they would have supplied the flat screw driver the size of the ones you use on a pair of glasses I would have saved more than an hour of wasted time looking for these things in my own home. Other manufactures of other products commonly do such things to improvement the customer’s experience. However, that is my ONLY complaint about all this. As one of the judges on American Idol likes to say, I’m just ‘keeping it real’ for y’all.
The first step was th attach the metal stand to the black charger station with simple bolts and screws.
Next, I tried to see of the cord from the solar panel to inside the deck box would fix in the space underneath the back of the lid. No such luck. So I drilled a hole on top of the deck box lid sufficiently large for the cord. However, I did not first look (you know what they say, measure twice and cut / drill once) to see the position of the cord in the underside of the solar panel. So, I had to drill a second time about 5 inches further away from the first hole.
Next I then attached the brackets to one of the two holes on either side of the frame on the underside of the solar panel. Next, as I carefully guided the 10 feet of cord from the back of the solar panel through the second hole I had drilled, I placed the solar panel right side up on top of the deck box lid.. Using the other side of these brackets as a guide, I then drilled two more holes into the top of the deck box, one for each bracket. This allowed me to then use other, longer screws (not provided) to affix the solar panel to the top of the deck box lid.
With the deck box lid now open, I placed the charging station unit inside. This charging unit comes with a solar charging controller into which the wires within the cord from the solar panel are placed. This solar charging controller will also ensure that the batteries are not over charged. It has two very small indicator lights. One will be red when the batteries are not in the charging unit and will be green when they are. The other small light will flash green when the batteries are in the charging unit being charged and will be a consistent (i.e. not flashing) green when they are fully charged and ready for use.
So, the solar charging station already has the wires into the controller. What you need to do is to insert, according to the very clear instructions (with diagrams) the wires from the solar panel into the solar charging controller by using a mini-screw driver.
And that’s it! Once I did this the two indicator lights on the solar charging controller were bright red (per above), which told me that I had connected the wires correctly.
The last thing was to remove the packaging around each battery and place them into the charging unit. This was the easiest part of this surprisingly easy assembly.
And then I waited. I was really, really tempted to place the batteries in the other charging unit that came with the lawn mower that can be plugged into an electrical outlet. I really want to start using this lawn mower. However, I wanted to do my own test to see how it would all work right from the start by being completely off grid.
We’ll wait for a few days and then report back to you on our first lawn mowing experience with our new solar charged, brushless, 24 V, self propelled, 19 inch, mulching, electric lawn mower! To continue to the next article in this series, where we take the new solar charged lawn mower out for a ‘test drive’ on our lawn, simply select this link to Part 5.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Scott // Apr 23, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Is the solar charger output 12V or 24V? How did you deal with connecting it to two 12V batteries, series or parallel? You will find web sites that tell you what angle to tilt the panel depending on your latitude and day of the year to keep it orthogonal to the sun\’s rays. But a simple shadow test using a straw will do the same (minimize the shadow) and bump it a bit every week or so throughout the season. You should tilt the panel, it could make about 30% difference in recharge time.
2 Dan // Apr 23, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Hey Scott,
The solar panel is 24V. The two batteries simply go into either slot in the charging ’station’. The solar panel has two electrical lines that go into the applicable ’slots’ in the charging controller.
I like the idea of the shadow test. In our case we mow the lawn at most once every week…perhaps once every 5 days when we’ve had lots of rain…..so leaving the panel flat works for us. However, I think it’s a great idea for those who mow more frequently and do not want to use the optional charging unit that plugs into an electrical outlet.
Dan
3 Tony Buser // Jun 13, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I just bought the 2009 Solar Charger kit and it no longer comes with the brackets and battery holder.
Here’s a picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tbuser/3621900743/
4 Dan // Jun 13, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Thanks for this, Tony.
I’m currently doing red-eye’s weekly which has prevented me from a lot of home tasks, including settting this up for our 2009 mower.
However, I can understand why the brackets and battery holder are no longer included. With the ability to directly plug into the mower with the batteries remaining therein, one could see how a separate battery holder and it’s brackets might be redundant.
However, I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that. I am glad I have the brackets and battery holder from last year (along with last year’s solar panel) as I might end up installing the solar charging the same way I did last year, i.e. with the batteries off of the mower.
When I get this set up I’ll post some pictures.
Dan
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