Solar Powered Fans

[sed]

I am thinking of building a large pole barn to house multiple open air chicken coops under and was thinking of adding some ceiling mounted fans in it to circulate air on hot days. Can you wire fans, maybe something like a cieling fan, on the inside of it and have them wired straight to solar panels (no batteries) so when the sun goes down and it cools off they would automatically stop since they would not be getting any sun?

 

[sunsaver]

Check out FarmTek catalog. They have solar powered fans and vents that are made for greenhouses and shuold be exactly what you are wanting. If you want to save some money and do it yourself, go to Freesunpower.com and study the tutorials. You can get your solar gear at windsun.com, altEstore.com, or any of several online stores. I also recomed builditsolar.com for hundreds of free plans and ideas. Good luck and let me know if i can help!

Oh and

 

[savingdogs]

but

 

[k0xxx]

There are a lot of solar fans out there. Northern Tools sells some. You can also buy gable or roof mounted fans that run directly off of a solar panel. As for ceiling fans, I would suspect that you could just purchase a 12v model and wire it directly to a suitably sized panel.

 

[rubyluise]

If you going through online then you getting lots of options about solar powered fan. I have Solar Panel Ventilator Vent Fan which is available in silver color and stay cool for so many times. It can be use by any type pf surface like Roof,shed,Boat-mounts on roofing,fiberglass,wood,metal or glass. Perfect solution to getting this kind of solar fan.

 

[janecristy]

Solar powered fans are really next generation fans which should be technically quite handy. Solar power is the need for replacement of conventional power generating methods by Coal, Petrol, Diesel, nuclear power, water reservoirs etc. Solar power is pollution less option and very economic too as solar energy produced by sun is reaching to us without any cost so we must avail it.

 

[~gd]

Solar powered fans are really next generation fans which should be technically quite handy. Solar power is the need for replacement of conventional power generating methods by Coal, Petrol, Diesel, nuclear power, water reservoirs etc. Solar power is pollution less option and very economic too as solar energy produced by sun is reaching to us without any cost so we must avail it.

Both Solar and Wind powered fans have been in use since the mid 20th century. fans for chicken houses often were powered by the body heat of the birds themselves. While the source of power may be cheap the gear to convert the power to a usefull form is not. BTW you do know that the greatest need for power [except for A/C]s when the sun is down? that means storage devices. Rechargable battries are not cheap and their production and disposal causes lots of polution since one element is usually toxic. There are other possible options for storage of power [Solar or otherwise] When Solar is truly economic there will be no longer be a need for a rebait for it's use. ~gd

 

[jeny001]

Solar powered fans are really next generation fans which should be technically quite handy. Solar power is the need for replacement of conventional power generating methods by Coal, Petrol, Diesel, nuclear power, water reservoirs etc. Solar power is pollution less option and very economic too as solar energy produced by sun is reaching to us without any cost so we must avail it.

Yes, I am with you. solar fan is a mechanical fan powered by solar panels. These solar rechargeable fans can be used in normal and non-power source situations like outdoor, indoor, vehicles, Ships, camping, in emergency power cut etc. Solar fan can work continuously for 2-5 hours during power failure. Its external body is made up of high quality ABS & PP material. Some fans have lighting device as well.

 

[Daffodils At The Sea]

Remember, if you don't want to use batteries, you still need a controller between the panels and your appliance. But if during the summer it doesn't cool off at night, won't you need those fans to keep going? Then you'd need to use batteries to be the source of power during the night.

Then you'd need an inverter to get it to AC, which allows you to buy cheaper fans at the local hardware store, and any fixes they might need are also from simple things at the hardware store. But you'd need a dry shed to keep these in.

Maybe there are DC fans for outdoor use, (most seem to be for inside attics, etc), but it seems that DC appliances (or whatever you're running DC) are extremely expensive. And DC can't travel that far from where the panels are to where the thing you're running it is without losing some power. AC can travel farther on bigger wire, so if you need to put the panels away from trees or buildings, you can make the distances longer.

Any fans that come in a kit with its own panel would need to be really strapped down, and that would also make it a DC fan, so it might have to be up on the roof where the fan goes in, not so easy to access, makes it more vulnerable to weather. I've had small panels that run small things, and they don't seem to last long and the connections tend to corrode.

I'm having issues with hover flies under the pine trees, and I'd love to install a solar fan that runs on its own power, so if you find any that seem to be robust and dependable, I hope you'll post it

 

[DeniseCharleson]

... And DC can't travel that far from where the panels are to where the thing you're running it is without losing some power. AC can travel farther on bigger wire, so if you need to put the panels away from trees or buildings, you can make the distances longer.

The losses for a given current in a given wire size will be the same, whether the current is AC or DC. What I think you mean is that low voltage DC can't travel far from panel to device unless the wire size is large, but AC can be stepped up to a higher voltage (resulting in lower current [amperes]) and, therefore, incur lower power losses. It is not the fact that it is AC that makes for the smaller losses, but the fact that AC can be stepped up to higher voltages, which makes for smaller losses.