- Cools your attic and home during the summer
- Completely self contained, solar powered unit
- The Federal tax credit for solar attic fans has been extended through 2016. The Solar Powered Attic Fan is eligible for a 30% credit on the purchase price of the fan, installation and sales tax.
Bill Keith, SunRise Solar: Inventor of a solar attic fan that
dramatically cuts energy bills
Bill Keith of St. John, Indiana had
run a roofing company with his brother for 20 years when he invented his
solar-powered attic fan, aiming to cut his customers' electric bills.
He attached a little 10-watt solar
panel to a DC motor to drive a 12-foot exhaust fan. The fan works at peak power exactly when it
needs to, when the sun is fiercest and the temperature rising, cutting the
cooling bill for an average home by about 30 percent. In the
winter, the fan removes damp air, and extending the life of the roof.
The company has just 24
employees, but uses local suppliers for its raw materials, manufacturing and
distribution, helping those companies stay afloat even in these rough times.
Bret Wolf, who manages business development for Indiana Vac-Form, calls SunRise
Solar "a key customer”:
“They’ve helped level off the peaks and valleys of our business,
allowing us to better plan for people, resources, machine time.
That stability also benefits the companies supplying our raw materials.
We've obviously felt the slowdown through our customers…but SunRise Solar has
helped us maintain our business in a very difficult economy."
"Success in America," says Wolf, "will come from small
companies like ours putting our heads together to innovate and incubate new
ideas. It's like the farm: you plant seeds and at first don't see the fruits of
your labor, but eventually things crack open and begin to grow and develop. The
exciting thing is that it's happening in lots of places: if a thousand small
start-up companies succeed and they all employ a few dozen people, and each of
their suppliers also grows, doesn't that make a significant difference to
America?"
Keith, an Indiana native and the son of blue-collar workers, lives with
his wife Lori and their four kids in the 100-year old farm house he grew up in.
U.S. Senator Richard Lugar recently named him a "Lugar Energy
Patriot."
You can read the full article at the Environmental Defense Fund
Page: http://apps.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=35925
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