The price of electricity and energy saving are subjects, in these times of political instability in Europe, very popular at the moment. By civic spirit as much as by technical curiosity, I launched the project of analyzing the consumption of all the devices of my house, in order to verify that, as we hear, we can save 10 to 20% of our electricity consumption without changing our habits nor our comfort level.
I mow my lawn with a Husqvarna Automower 415x robot mower. This is an opportunity to measure its annual consumption and to find ways to optimize it.
What does a robot lawn mower consume?
The consumption of a robot lawn mower depends enormously on the surface to be mowed and the complexity of the garden. In other words, it is proportional to the duration of use.
My test conditions are:
- Land of about 1200 m2, quite complex.
- Mowing about 7 months a year
- Mowing on average 6 hours a day, 6 days a week. So 3 hours of actual mowing and 3 hours of charging.
Of the 8760 hours per year, we have:
| Number of hours | Annual consumption | |
|---|---|---|
| Charging: 30W | 547 | 16.4 kWh |
| Standby: 2.1W | 8213 | 17.2 kWh |
| Total | 8760 | 33.6 kWh |
My mower therefore consumes 33.6 kWh per year
We will see later that I was able to optimize this consumption at 17.3 kWh per year.
How can I optimize the consumption of my mower?
The first track tested is to turn off the power to the base station at night, through a timer electrical outlet. It turned out to be a bad idea: In this case, the robot goes into alarm “no loop signal” and its battery drains quickly. In one night, the charge level increases from 100 to 30%, and the recharge required the next day consumes much more than the energy used at night.
Activating the “ECO Mode” function of the mower increases standby consumption from 2.1W to 0.2W. This mode disables the power supply to the loop signal while the mower does not mow. So we earn 15.6 kWh per year (almost 50% of the total consumption in my case).
Turning off the base station during the 5 months of winter will save an additional 0.7 kWh per year.
| Number of hours | Annual consumption | |
|---|---|---|
| Charging: 30W | 547 | 16.4 kWh |
| Standby: 0.2W | 4563 | 0.9 kWh |
| Total | 5110 | 17.3 kWh |
The conclusion
I went from 33.6 to 17.3 kWh per year, a saving of 48%, by:
- activating the “ECO mode” of my Automower mower
- unplugging the base station during the months when I take my robot out of service.
In financial terms, it’s only a few € (or $, or francs…). But in terms of optimization, the result is interesting!
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