Now is the time to improve cabinet cooling before next summer

The temperatures may be feeling quite mild but, even if the thermometer has not yet regularly dropped below zero, you are probably no longer hearing the alarms on your cooling units. While this is likely to mean you are spending less time maintaining overheating control panels, it would be a mistake to forget about climate control.

In fact, the opposite is true; this is actually the best time of year to turn your mind to your enclosures, carry out a climate review, and start to understand what changes or improvements need to be made.

Last summer, of course, things were very different. Fans and filters were not cutting it, as the ambient temperature in the workplace was higher than you wanted inside your enclosures! Now that everything has settled down, it is worth assessing any problem enclosures and making the necessary changes to ensure that this summer you are free to spend your time on tasks other than firefighting.

The cost of overheating componentry

It is important to remember that every degree above your set-point will be time removed from the life of your expensive equipment, including PLCs, variable-speed drives and transformers. Collectively, this can easily have a replacement value that tops 100k, even in a relatively small setup. If you replace only 2 per cent of that equipment each year because of burnt-out componentry, then the costs can quickly mount up and it is an entirely unnecessary spend.

But it is not just the cost of repair and replacement of the actual componentry. There are also the add-on operations costs caused by componentry breaking down and stopping the processes it controls. This lost output will continue for as long as it takes to repair the fault, and is bound to have consequences for your wider business, impacting productivity and efficiency, and thereby reducing profits.

Think about climate control

Correct climate control is often overlooked during the installation of electronic equipment because the focus is all on the equipment, not on regulating the environment that it operates within.

This is where Rittal can help you: we are the world leaders in enclosure climate control products and pride ourselves on being your trusted advisor. With our RiAssure service, one of our trained staff can visit you and provide a free Cooling Review. This review is a short visual inspection of your existing enclosures and cooling equipment; from this we can ascertain the next best step for your equipment and also provide ongoing, best-practice suggestions so that your operations benefit from increased longevity, life and profit.

Make this your resolution for 2019 and reap the benefits of the optimising your climate control. Follow the link to find out more about RiAssure and arranging a free Cooling Review.