An idea, free to anyone who has a better electronics background than me (read: any electronics background) to implement:

Fans powered by a telephone jack. The idea came to me this morning, when I read that Los Angeles suffered power outages while temperatures were over 100° farenheit, and people were really suffering, but able to phone into the utilities companies to see what was going on. I then remembered that phone lines contain a small electrical charge, which lights up buttons on the phone, etc. It's not a heavy electrical charge, to be sure, but it should be enough to run a small fan!