Can I use a 12v, 13 watt solar panel on an AC Desk Fan?

Question

I want to wire my 13 watt solar panel to a desk fan for air circulation in my green house. The desk fan is 120v 60hz .5 amps AC only. The solar cell is for DC appliances. How would I go about this?

Thanks! =)

Answer 1

As the others have said, your solar panel clearly does not provide enough power to drive the fan. If you use multiple panels in parallel, however, you may be able to get it to work with the assistance of an inverter circuit, shown in the link below. to get the power output you need you will need to do analysis on the circuit, which of course will require a background in electrical engineering. Also, the author states to not use it for inductive loads, but I'm sure you could get it to work by adding a corrective capacitive load to the load to the fan. This will require you to know the fan's impedance, which you could figure out with an oscilloscope.

short answer-

It would be MUCH easier to go with a DC fan.

Answer 2

It won't work.  The fan takes 60 watts of power (120 VAC X .5 amps = 60 watts).  The solar panel puts out 13 watts of power.  This is less than 1/3 what the fan draws.  

You could buy 1 or 2 small 12 VDC fans as long as the total power is less than 13 watts.

Answer 3

use DC fan just buy any computer blower fan (you must have observed on the chasis inside the cabinet) all are 12V DC type

Answer 4

you can use a LM555 timer IC and build a chopper circuit. The 555 puts out a real spurious square wave, but it will cause a 120V muffin fan to run... but your fan is not a muffin fan, infact, it requires about 60 watts to run. You need about 20 panels to make the fan run.