Project Overview

Haiku H Series is the world’s most advanced ceiling fan. Its breakthrough SenseME™ Technology responds automatically to changing room conditions like occupancy, temperature and humidity, keeping users comfortable and effortlessly saving energy year-round.

Organisation

Haiku® Home by Big Ass Solutions®

Team

Haiku H Series was created by the team of engineers and product developers at Big Ass Solutions in Lexington, Kentucky.

Project Brief

The conventional ceiling fan had gone largely unchanged for about 100 years. Flat pressboard blades, noisy, inefficient motors and clunky design were simply accepted as standard.
The original Haiku was created to address the shortcomings of these conventional fans, and Haiku H Series improves upon that design by incorporating premium materials and smart technology for even greater convenience and conservation potential.

H Series fans use sculpted airfoils, which move far more air than flat blades. Their motors are tested in a sound chamber to ensure silent operation. Their design is simple, elegant and incredibly efficient. Put simply, Haiku H Series was engineered as a reinvention of the ceiling fan, and that’s exactly what it is.

Project Innovation/Need

In addition to its superior airfoils and ultra-efficient motor, the automated capabilities of Haiku H Series are what make it unlike any other ceiling fan. The fan’s occupancy sensor saves energy by running the fan only when users are in the room, and its temperature and humidity sensors read and react to changing environmental conditions automatically. H Series’ dynamic Smart Mode features seasonal settings – Smarter Cooling and Smarter Heating – that reduce the workloads of home heating and cooling systems. Since these systems account for more than half of a typical home’s energy consumption, H Series’ potential to meaningfully reduce energy usage on a large-scale is truly profound.

Smarter Cooling, combined with H Series’ sculpted airfoils, allows users to raise their thermostat levels by several degrees in warmer months, reducing costs without sacrificing comfort. Smarter Heating works by gently pushing to floor-level warm air that collects at the ceiling. When the room is unoccupied, the fan turns more quickly, more thoroughly destratifying the air, keeping users comfortable while allowing them to run their heating systems less frequently and for shorter periods. Haiku H Series can also be paired with a Nest Learning Thermostat™ to make saving even simpler and more convenient.

Design Challenge

The primary challenge for H Series was simple: current ceiling fan design was ugly and inefficient, but it had always been that way, so users accepted it. Haiku H Series is a radical change, but not one whose value is necessarily obvious. When users are uncomfortable, they tend to crank up the A/C or heat because it’s more convenient than constantly flipping switches. Making consumers understand that ceiling fans – when designed to be maximally effective – are a viable comfort solution, even in winter, and then making their operation convenient enough that using the fan is actually incentivized (through immediate comfort and longer-term energy savings) is the two-part key to overcoming the accepted practices of literally millions of people.

Sustainability

Haiku H Series is available with cocoa and caramel-colored airfoils handcrafted from sustainable Moso bamboo, and its motor utilizes permanent magnetics to achieve unparalleled levels of efficiency. In fact, H Series operates eight times more efficiently than conventional ceiling fans and up to 12 times more efficiently than required by ENERGY STAR® efficiency standards. This efficiency has the potential to impact energy consumption on a broad scale. For example, if each thermostat in the U.S. was raised 6°F, carbon emissions would be reduced by 63 billion pounds annually. That change would be possible (without sacrificing user comfort) through H Series’ Smarter Cooling mode.

Additionally, if all existing ceiling fans were replaced with H Series fans, the reduction in carbon emissions (7.5 billion pounds) would be equivalent to removing 715,000 cars from the road for an entire year, or removing Washington, D.C. from the grid.
Obviously, goals like these are ambitious, but they’re a testament to what’s possible with H Series’ exceptional efficiency.