The Importance of Quality Cooling for Electrical Enclosures in Hot Environments

Cooling_for_Electrical_Enclosures_in_Hot_EnvironmentsThe components inside an electrical enclosure must be protected from both the heat they generate and the heat from the surrounding environment. In hotter environments, whether they are indoors or outdoors, you must be certain that the cooling system will not fail.

To do this, it is important to calculate the estimated heat load to determine the correct air conditioner size. Once properly sized, you must select a cooling system that is both durable and reliable. The consequences of cooling system failure can be much more costly than you might expect. This is especially true for remote locations where the enclosure is not regularly monitored. If the cooling system fails, it may not be detected for a number of weeks. In the meantime, valuable equipment is subject to overheating, damage, and ultimately failure.

Why You Need Quality Cooling for an Electrical Enclosure

Some of the reasons a quality cooling system is so important for an electrical enclosure in a hot environment include:

  • Lost time – When a component fails, you must take the time to identify the source of the problem, determine how to solve it, find a replacement part, and repair the broken part. In the meantime, if operations have stopped because of the equipment failure, your workforce is also losing time.
  • Lost productivity – In a manufacturing application, a failed component can lead to a stopped production line. The inability to produce inventory can create backlogs and unhappy customers.
  • Equipment damage – Replacing the failed components is sometimes the least of the problems that can result from electronic equipment failure, but it is still a problem that must be addressed. What if the failed components inside the electrical enclosure are no longer manufactured? You will have to find a source that maintains an inventory, find a way to replace the part with a new one, or reconfigure the entire system.
  • Lost money – All of this lost time, productivity, and equipment adds up to lost money, and potentially a lot of it. When you run the numbers, you will quickly discover that the investment in a quality cooling system is well worth the potential savings you will get by ensuring that your electrical components, and your operations, are continuously protected. When evaluating an enclosure cooling system, the total cost of ownership must be considered. This includes both ongoing maintenance costs and power consumption. Procuring a lower-cost unit that does not operate efficiently or requires frequent repair will actually cost more in the long term than a high-quality unit that is reliable, properly sized, and energy efficient.

Fortunately, these problems are avoidable with a quality cooling system. In fact, most new enclosure air conditioners operate more efficiently than older units, so you will save money over the lifetime of the system simply by upgrading.

Thermal Edge has a strong track record of designing and manufacturing quality cooling systems for electrical enclosures. We’ll work closely with you to help you select the highest quality system that is right for your application. Ask for your free quote today to get started.