Are Your Enclosures
Ready for the Summer?
Rittal is warning users of manufacturing
automation systems to check that they
are prepared for the summer heat and,
if necessary, arrange for an inspection of
their equipment to check the level of risk. Assuming an efficiency of 97 per cent, a
250kW drive can produce up to 7.5kW of
heat, much of which is retained inside the
enclosure in which it’s installed. Therefore
without adequate cooling heat will rise.
High temperatures are the most
common cause of sensitive electrical and
electronic components tripping or even
failing. The life expectancy of components
is hugely affected by excess heat. An
electrical component’s life expectancy
is reduced by 50 per cent for every 10°C
increase in the ambient temperature. So
keeping an expensive Inverter drive cool,
prelongs its life, reduces the risk of failure
and saves you money.
A failed electrical device can cause
major disruption to production which
could cost a company hundreds of
thousands of pounds per hour. The cost
of catastrophic equipment failure is even
higher, because it means an extended
period of downtime while replacement
products are sourced and fitted.
Jason Swann, Rittal’s Product Manager
for Climate advises: “Electrical equipment
generates lots of heat. Add to this the
ambient heat from the rising summer
temperatures and your enclosure will start
to reach a critical point of overheating
without sufficiecnt cooling. What would
you do if the equipment that manages
your production line - your PLCs, drives
and controls - failed due to inadequate or
inappropriate cooling? Can you afford to
take the risk.”
Inverter drives are used within electrical
equipment because they are very effective
at reducing the amount of energy used
– which means lower production costs.
Planning Climate Control
Rittal offers the following list of questions
to check if there may be a problem
brewing:
• Is your equipment tripping or failing
due to high temperatures?
• Is this having an impact on
production, in that it’s either slowing
or stopping completely?
• When you walk around your shop
floor, do your enclosures feel hot to
the touch?
• At the height of summer, are your
enclosure doors regularly left open
and do you need large fans blowing
into your panels to cool the devices
inside them? This also presents a
health and safety risk!
• Does inadequate chilling of process
fluids result in production down-time?
• Would your existing cooling solution
benefit from a health check?
Any “yes” responses suggests a thermal
survey could be a sensible next step.
Rittal’s expert team can provide a
RiAssure3 survey and if necessary advise
on the best solution.
Jason explains: “A RiAssure3 survey
will identify the likely risk of a system
ove rheating. The survey will review any
existing cooling solution and determine
how suited it is to that particular working
environment. If necessary, it will then
provide recommendations around
remedial action – for example, changes
to the system’s service and maintenance
regime to help improve its efficiency or
the recommendation to invest in different
climate control technology.
“Our engineers will always offer
their advice from the perspective of
functionality, energy efficiency, ease of
installation, service and maintenance,
based on real-life data measured on site.”
Protecting Control and Automation
Equipment
Which cooling solution is installed
ultimately depends on the amount of
heat produced inside the panel and the
Are you COOL about
the internal temperature
of your enclosures?
ENCLOSURES
POWER DISTRIBUTION
CLIMATE CONTROL