The hat uses solar panels mounted to the brim to activate a fan that keeps the head cool. It will sell for $29.95.

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About eight years ago, an idea came to Tommie Nellon as he was installing solar panels in Fresno, Calif.'s, 110-degree heat.

"It was so hot we had to use gloves to pick up (metal) tools," he said.

The entrepreneur, who runs a multimillion-dollar company, decided then and there to put solar panels on a wide-brimmed straw hat to power a fan that could cool him off.

It took four years to find the right fan for the job and about the same amount of time to work through the patent system.

In November, he got a patent for a "combined solar-powered fan and hat for maximizing airflow through the hat." Nellon said he expects to start making the hats soon and to sell them for $29.95 each.

He said potential customers could range from farmworkers to amusement park visitors. Nellon has made dozens of the hats already, and his workers use them on the job with his company, Unlimited Energy Inc., in Fresno.

"There was a guy who offered me $100 for a hat," Nellon said, displaying the slightly tattered one he has worn the past three years.

Before looking into a patent, Nellon commissioned a report by Invention Submission Corp., which has a Fresno office, to search for patents and to look at the prospects for selling the invention.

Tim Stearns, director of the Lyles Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at California State University-Fresno, said Nellon's hat does a good job of addressing "the pain" of working in hot conditions.

It's broad-brimmed, with solar panels, and made of light straw. In the front is mounted a small — very light — plastic fan that directs the air not to the wearer's face, but across the top of the head. Patent documents say it "reduces the incidence of heat exhaustion (and) heatstroke."