Liquid Cooled Inverter

[ktech]

Speaking with a potential customer today that had been quoted on a German liquid cooled inverter, personally not come across this but it is suppose to be great for use in lofts etc as it is not cooled by air. I said I think he has been told a load of sales rubbish but has anyone come across this type of inverter?

 

[SibertSolar]

News to me. Can't see it being viable on a small 1ph unit, maybe a very large central inverter but...even the new 1MW ABB units derate at 55C

Could they have got their wires crossed somewhere with thermodynamics or hybrid thermal/PV panels perhaps?

 

[SibertSolar]

Correction - just found several very large central inverters that incorporate liquid cooling, was it a large solar farm you were discussing?

 

[Gavin A]

my mate used to custom build extremely high end computers for gamers / nerds, using liquid cooling, so it obviously must be possible to do this at this sort of scale.

however, it doesn't really solve the problem of high ambient air temperature unless you're actually using the liquid to pipe the heat away to a heat exchanger somewhere much cooler.

I prefer the option the likes of Steca have gone for, which is just going all out for efficiency in order to absolutely minimise the actual heat output from the inverter - a 4kWp array running at peak through a 97.5% inverter will only lose 100W of heat vs 200W for a 95% efficient inverter, so tackling the problem at source definitely seems like the better way to deal with it, plus you get 2.5% more output instead of sucking power away running pumps for a liquid cooling system.

Vent tiles are always a good option as well...

 

[ktech]

This was a solution for a 4kW inverter. As I described to the potential customer sounded like rubbish - came with a 20 year warranty, at a quite high price tag.

 

[Gary K]

Correction - just found several very large central inverters that incorporate liquid cooling, was it a large solar farm you were discussing?

That would be in a HAYLOFT then???

 

[SibertSolar]

Lol @ Gary