A little solar powered wind

Today I was walking through a small earth day festival in my town and noticed an interesting looking fan. This fan, as it turns out, is installed into the attic of houses and pushed air out of the attic. What's so cool or even environmentally relevant about this? This fan is capable of reducing your electric bill in the summer, and it's solar powered! Since I just attended a lecture on solar power panels this past week I thought it was an interesting, smaller, and more cost efficient alternative to large panels which generate electricity but are costly to install.

The benefit to these fans is that they circulate air within the attic with the combined help of either a soffit or a gable vent, diagrams of which can be seen at the bottom of this page. The idea is that the vents allow air from the outside to enter, and the solar powered fan pulls the air that heats up in the attic out of the house. The fan is capable of moving air at a rate of 800 to 1200 cfm (cubic feet per minute). This prevents the air in your attic from reaching extremely high temperatures that are caused by the attic's stagnant air collecting heat from the sun heating the hot roof and keeping it insulated in there. This stagnant air collects and begins to radiate heat into the rest of the home. It also prevents the hot air in the rest of the home from rising up and radiate into the attic, and from there out of the house.

By circulating the air and keeping the attic and the house cooler, it reduces the need for energy on the airconditioning unit. Since this is one of the major energy consumers in the home during the summer, it will make a but impact on reducing cost. This reductiong is only possible because of the solar panel that comes attached to the fan. The unit is therefore not connected to the rest of the wiring of the house. The benefit of the fan being solar powered is that it operates during the highest concentrations of sun light. Since the highest need for cooling occurs when the sun is at its height, this system works out amazingly because it works it's hardest when it is needed the most.

One downfall is that it does cost slightly more than electrical systems according to one site, but if you consider the savings and that it doesn't have to have the extra connection to the electrical system, then it works out in the end to be more economical. The system to be very simple to install compared to other solar powered or electrical systems. There is also the advantage that this can be installed into any type of home with an attic. At the festival one woman was interested in installing one into her Victorian home. This therefore seems like a great way to retrofit a home to be more environmentally friendly and sustainable with minimal additions so that the character of the home is maintained.