AirScape Engineer's Blog

We at AirScape are happy to learn of the first whole house fan rebate available in Hawaii! (link) Offered to Hawaii Energy customers, the rebate offers customers $75 back on a whole house fan purchase and $25 back on a solar attic fan purchase. It’s great timing for this type of incentive, because summer is approaching and these efficient natural cooling solutions can help reduce your need for A/C – thus saving you money and sparing the environment.

Get them while they last, though, as the application states it is effective for purchases made from April 1st to June 1st, 2011. We hope for more rebates to roll out soon in Hawaii for all sorts of energy-saving and energy-producing technologies with the recent progress of SB 1520, which would have been left to die if it weren’t for a great showing of public support. Thanks to Hawaii Energy and the Blue Planet Foundation for their efforts to help secure a clean-energy future!

We just discovered that the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power offers a $200 rebate for installing a Whole House Fan. Check out the details by clicking here.

Not in the LA area? Many other municipalities and utilities offer WHF rebates. Take a look at our blog covering the full list of rebates we have found so far:

http://blog.airscapefans.com/archives/new-whf-rebates

We are excited to find that a few utility companies outside of California are now offering rebates for whole house fans. It’s nice to see some forward thinking by these companies. After all, energy savings can come from more than just replacing appliances or installing new windows.

Fort Collins Utility in Colorado is now offering a $250 rebate for the installation of a whole house fan

Pennsylvania is the first East Coast state with utilities offering rebates on whole house fans. PECO and Duquesne Light offer $90 and $130 rebates respectively

If you are a builder in Utah you can receive a $200 rebate on a WHF from Rocky Mountain Power when building a new energy efficient home

The table below lists all of the rebates that we are aware of for whole house fans and solar attic fans (your solar attic fan already qualifies for a 30% federal tax credit). Please refer to the utility rebate website for specific details on qualifications, $$$, and application forms.

We have always been a bit miffed that whole house fans are not eligible for an Energy Star rating. It was always our impression that the feds were too busy to find the time to recognize and certify one of the best energy saving technologies around. (That’s a Whole House Fan, BTW) So it came as a pleasant surprise, to see that one arm of our government (the GAO Government Accountability Office) was doing its job.

The folks at the GAO submitted several bogus products to test just how carefully the EPA (administrators of the Energy Star Certifcation) examined products and claims. Now, this is where it would be funny if it wasn’t true. Here is one product they submitted:

So that's how you save electricity... make it gas powered ? DUH !

As if this wasn't enough, they also submitted an "Air Room Cleaner". Yes, that is a duster attached to what is apparently a fan/filter unit. (It was also approved.)

What are the lessons to be learned:

• Make real standards for energy efficiency.
• Verify performance is to those standards.
• Fire somebody !

Hats off to the GAO people !  Not so much for the EPA.

See the whole report at: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10470.pdf

At long last! Southern California Edison, the only remaining utility company still needing to update their rebate list to include our 2.5 and 4.5 models, has finally done so. Good grief, it took them long enough!  For over 6 months now I have been making at least one, but usually more, pleading calls a week to their rebate center and rebate program manager. I’ve sent more than a dozen emails to them.  I’ve begged anyone over there who would listen to look at the California Energy Commission appliance database and the PG&E website for the required documentation, which are the only requirements listed for SCE to list a new product model.

It wasn’t the rejection that bothered me the most, although 6 months with no response is disheartening to say the least. What bothered me most was when customers would call us, frustrated at receiving a rejection to their rebate application, who had been told by the SCE rebate center that their list was absolutely up to date with no pending items.  No pending items? What do they call over half a year’s worth of unanswered voicemail messages and emails then?

Well, all my bitterness aside, I am happy to announce that the long wait is over.  Every model whole house fan that AirScape manufacturers is now listed on the SCE’s list of qualifying products. SCE qualifying product list

For a list of the other utility companies that offer rebates on our fans, see our rebate page. AirScape rebates