Two reasons: I needed a job after I quit previous one, and I wanted to know more about the scope of the problem in my local community.  How did I expect to solve an issue of nutrient runoff from lawns without getting my hands dirty on a lawn? And not just one, I wanted the full picture. The scope of the problem is significantly more complicated than I imagined;  from homeowner and business behaviors, city planning and development decisions, and the challenging nature of our diverse landscape here on the space coast of Central Florida.

Noise and air pollution from traditional lawn care equipment can be undesirable for local communities and operators.  I wanted to try a fully electric setup from the beginning.  Inevitably electric will become the norm for many applications, but it's still very early days for all-electric lawn care businesses. The challenge is two-fold: affordability and runtime.  I chose a middle-ground: EGO.  My priorities were getting started quickly and relatively affordably.  EGO isn't on the low-cost side (or the high end, either), but it provided the flexibility to move batteries between equipment and I could source it immediately at my local stores. No matter the equipment I chose, I was starting a lawn care business from scratch.

Starting out I had (borrowed) an enclosed trailer and it doesn't take much experience with electric equipment and solar to connect the dots on possibilities.  The challenges I laid out above - affordability and runtime - are front and center running an all-electric lawn care business.  I had built up a small client list and was having to continually push new clients to new days.  After getting to three days and looking at needing a fourth, I wanted to solve my runtime problem. More batteries for all my equipment? I could, but that would set me back a large chunk of money and only partly solve the problem, I would still have trouble taking on more clients.  So I decided to do what I had planned all along: install solar on the roof of the trailer, an onboard storage battery, and an inverter to power all my equipment.  The crazy part? It actually works.