Lithium Batteries

What would a composite lithium ion battery look like if we were to use one for the mower?

We need a nominal voltage of 24V, so if you string 7 18650 batteries with a nominal voltage of 3.6V you’d end up with 25.2V, which should work fine.

String 15 sets of those 7 rows of batteries connected in series together and you get a battery with 45Ah of charge. Not too shabby. This would be a 7s15p battery in lithium ion parlance, I think.

Two of those 7s15p batteries would fit in each of our two battery bays. You’d need a total of four to achieve the numbers shown above. They’d fit in our robot something like this:

The weight savings here are significant: 70lb. This is to be expected, but I’m surprised it’s this high. I don’t have a truck to haul this robot around in, so the lighter I can make it, the easier it will be to take it out for field testing. The reduced weight should also decrease the power consumption from the robot’s drive motors, making it more efficient, and possibly more agile.

The cost is still going to be over $1,000 though. Talking with some suppliers, I think the 18650 cells cost a little less than what Amazon will quote you, probably closer to $4.50 per cell. But you still need some fancy charging equipment, and there will be labor and material cost for building up the battery and coming up with a way to secure them in the battery bay.

I may start out using SLA batteries because the monetary risk is pretty low, about $300. They may perform better than I’m expecting. If they don’t, the lithium ion batteries appear to be a good plan B if we need more run time.