BLAINE, Minn. — Mowing your lawn at home may take a few minutes, or a few hours, depending on the size of your yard.
However, mowing the lawn at the National Sports Center in Blaine takes much longer.
With more than 400 acres of soccer fields, it takes 30 commercial-grade lawn mowers and a team of more than 250 workers to keep the grass looking nice.
“We’re always looking for ways to be even more energy efficient,” executive director Todd Johnson said.
The thought of being able to cut all this grass with robotic lawn mowers was very appealing to Johnson.
He was very interested when Connexus Energy and Husqvarna reached out to him to announce a new mower that can cut grass without a driver and without gas.
“We’ve sold about a thousand units so far in Europe,” Husqvarna Global Tech Support expert Peter Hallin said.
“About 60-70% of those units are being used on soccer fields. Golf courses are also very interested.”
At the National Sports Center, they have both soccer fields and a golf course.
That’s why the directors at the athletic complex were given the opportunity to be some of the first people in the United States to see these new lawn mowers up close.
“We have 25 units here in North America right now,” Hallin said. “We’re showing people what they can do.”
These new mowers are part of Husqvarna’s CEORA line.
Hallin says these lawn mowers can run on less than $18 of electricity a month (based on the current electricity rates in Minnesota).
The mowers feature a unique blade design that requires less energy than a typical lawn mower. Hallin says customers can also add a solar-powered charging station that can power these mowers with green energy.
“Electric is the way of the future,” Hallin said.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, around 5% of the nation’s air pollution is caused by lawn mowers.
Johnson says there are very few electric options on the marketplace right now, and no options when it comes to commercial-grade lawn mowers.
“I don’t know of a single electric mower out there that is as big as the mowers we use here on the soccer fields,” Johnson said.
Right now, Johnson says the National Sports Center is burning thousands of gallons of gas a year to maintain their soccer fields.
He says they’re very interested in electric-powered lawn mowers, because they already have electric golf carts on their golf course and electric Zambonis for their ice rinks. The only issue Johnson sees is the price.
According to Husqvarna employees, a CEORA driverless lawn mower costs around $32,000.
Employees say one mower can handle about 18 acres of land per day.
That means the National Sports Center would need dozens of these lawn mowers to handle their 400 acres of soccer field.
Johnson says he doesn’t expect to replace his entire fleet of lawn mowers anytime soon, but he says they might be interested in one or two.
"You have to sort of crawl before you walk, and walk before you run, and we'd give it a shot and see how it goes,” Johnson said.
Several other manufacturers are now getting into the driverless and electric lawn mower market. In 2021, the state of California passed a law that bans the sale of gas-powered lawn mowers starting in 2024.
The California Air Resources Board claims that emissions from running a lawn mower for one hour is equivalent to driving 300 miles a in standard car.
That number is even worse for leaf blowers.
The board claims running a gas-powered leaf blower for an hour creates the same amount of emissions as driving 1,100 miles.
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