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Who's fresh air cooling your equipment and how are your temps?

Luk88 said:
How big is your basement?

I have a small 2.2x4.5m cellar (not under a house) and I decided to install my inverters in the stairwell to provide fresh air cooling (there is a pvc curtain between the stairwell and the cellar to prevent condensation of hot air on cold walls). I decided it this way, because I thought the inverters will heat up that small cellar very quickly and I'll have to add fresh air cooling anyway so I may as well preserve that cold for the batteries.

I'm still building my system so I can't say what temps will be like. It is an insulated building and there will be a 100mm extraction fan(inlet through an existing gap under the door). Outside temps can get up to 35C / 95F so I hope inside will not exceed it.
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My basement is 1600 sqft. I am going to build a fire rated room around just my equipment, so about 1/4 of my basement. I will have fans to circulate the air in and out of this new room, but shut down by temp, and in the case of a fire.
 
San Jose:
Sunny Boy GT PV on South exterior wall (incorrectly exposed to sun, had awning for a while)
More Sunny Boy under the deck.
Sunny Island battery inverter under the deck (with silicone sheet seal over the front panel that would be NEMA-1 instead of 3R)
AGM batteries on the ground under the deck.

Oakland plans:
Sunny Boy, Sunny Island, AGM in the crawl space.

If I mount LG RESU-10H batteries, they will go on a West facing block wall at side of driveway, with sun/rain shade over them.

No explicit cooling.
Earlier convection cooled Sunny Boy, I put PV powered DC fans on top of heat sink, which reduced surface temperature considerably.
Newer Sunny Boy and Sunny Island are in "OptiCool" package, convection fins plus two thermostatic fans.
Latest Sunny Boy (for Oakland) has a single thermostatic fan.


If I had equipment on a hot shed, I'd consider ducting cool exterior air into inverter, and over batteries. If not heat-producing and non outgassing, maybe let inverter draw air over batteries. Sunny Island has a thermocouple and relay for battery fan.
 
B-Mod said:
My basement is 1600 sqft. I am going to build a fire rated room around just my equipment, so about 1/4 of my basement. I will have fans to circulate the air in and out of this new room, but shut down by temp, and in the case of a fire.
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Wow, yes, that makes sense now... Your basement is 1.5x the area of my entire house 🤣
 
My XW pro is in my insulated edit: UNinsulated garage, in the California Central Valley. It ran all summer to the last two years, no problem, no derating. Even running at it's full (when the grid is up) 6kw output for 3 hours straight. I've never measured the temps, but has never derated on me.
 
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SilverbackMP said:
I’d almost consider a full 20 ft container. I’m out of room in a 12x12. Granted there’s a man door and one wall is garage door (but a shipping container would still have an end wall door). I also have my server/switches stuff in there but it’s just two wall mount short depth racks with the smallest Husky adjustable height workbench (the kind that crank up and down) underneath them. And my Sunny Boys take up more room than SCCs. And my MidNite Solar Battery Combiner box takes up more room than a regular bus bar. And I have another small box that has MidNite Solar Lightning Arrestors for the incoming lines from the panels.
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I am near completion on my 20’ container. I am using an eg4 18kpv and 3 indoor batteries(42.9kwh) to start with. I believe I could fit 6 or 7 per long wall and 2 on the end wall. Rack batteries probably could get more capacity per foot of wall space. Minimum I would suggest is half a 20’ container. I just insulated the whole thing.

I will add an inline fan to 4 of the built in vent holes, but the inverter can make decent heat when running at mid to higher levels. I have had the door open for now and threw in a portable ac.
 

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I have been going back and forth on this, I was planning on installing my system in my detached uninsulated garage but it gets pretty hot in the summer. I decided to go with some ip55 telecom cabinets with integrated heat and A/C, they are going to be around $1400.00 before shipping for the A/C cabinet. I can either install them in my garage or next to the house in my side yard. Going to try and air cool the battery boxes and just do one 500watt a/c on the inverter cabinet.

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My "Solar Corner" is in an old horse stable which is now very well insulated. I have small gym and floorball practise court there now too so every one benefits cool temperatures in that building this time of year. I keep the whole 900m3 (32000ft3) building at +16C (60F) with one mini split and it helps that 1/4 of the building is underground. Really rare to have over +35C (95F) outside temperatures here and if temperature goes over +25C (77F) it is always accompanied with lots of sun so solar production is high also. My LFPs are usually around +20C (68F) and Deye DC side +25C (77F) and AC side +50C (122F). Before solar stuff I never needed to cool this building as it stayed around 18-20C all summer naturally.
 
400bird said:
My XW pro is in my insulated garage, in the California Central Valley. It ran all summer to the last two years, no problem, no derating. Even running at it's full (when the grid is up) 6kw output for 3 hours straight. I've never measured the temps, but has never derated on me.
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Indeed I am pulling 5kW now continuous with a 98 degree ambient temp at the bottom air intake on the XW+ and it's still chewing that 60hz out like a workhorse.

2.3kW grid charging and 3kW solar both running full blast to keep up with it on the DC side. 98 amps on my 100A blue sea charge bus bar which itself is a toasty 50C (it's inside an unventilated bus box).

The XW's fans are pretty spun up but they're a real nice low frequency kind of noise not that jet engine server fan crap.
 
400bird said:
My XW pro is in my insulated garage, in the California Central Valley. It ran all summer to the last two years, no problem, no derating. Even running at it's full (when the grid is up) 6kw output for 3 hours straight. I've never measured the temps, but has never derated on me.
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Oops, UNinsulated. Corrected above.

hwy17 said:
The XW's fans are pretty spun up but they're a real nice low frequency kind of noise not that jet engine server fan crap.
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For sure, much more bearable.
 
hwy17 said:
I commissioned my system in April, so this is my first summer. I have an XW+ and MPPT 100 600 in a utility room with 2 external walls and no insulation, imagine basically the temperature of an unconditioned garage with the windows open.

My intention, so far, is that I will only provide ventilation and not air conditioning. And so far that consists of 2 open windows and a 120mm exhaust fan that sits above my equipment's exhaust, to try and suck that hot air out of the room.

Currently at 1pm, 89f/31c outside, inverter is pulling 4.3kW, and intake air temperature at the bottom of the inverter is 93f/34c.

It feels disconcerting, the body of the inverter is hot, and it makes me want to jump to add more ventilation. But, there's only a 3c difference between outdoor and indoor temps so what's more ventilation really going to do without cooling.

Doesn't help that I understand internally this inverter's got a paralleled pair of maybe 4awg wires between the fets and transformer primary that are pulling like 150+ amps under that load! But I'm not supposed to worry about that, those are internal wires that follow chassis wiring rules, and they have active chassis ventilation running over them.

I'm still continuing as planned, but I'm going to be operating closer to my inverter's derating charts. In a stronger heatwave of 104f/40c+ pulling more like 5kW for A/C I could even be looking at violating the threshold. So maybe I do need to start considering a window A/C backup for that event.
View attachment 219973
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I put the 3 inch spacer between the CC/ Inverter to the wall / shelves they attached on
then I remove all the CC and Inverter top covers
place a pair of 150mm ( more if needed ), computer style cooling fan on the hottest parts of the unit
noticing the internal fan rarely kicks in even the Ambient temp reach 100+ degree F
and this's 6600 w solar panels/ 8kw inverter/25kwh Batt
amp drawing up to 120 - 150 anytime needed
 
Took the front access panel off and hung it below one of my 6500ex's that was getting too hot just during the hottest times during this CA heat way (3 hours south of OP). Also removed the RIGHT top filter when facing unit to help influx just for a few hours, this was temporary it reduced the temps a number of degrees, but they still got hot. Had box/other fans blowing on/around/away from the units, temps were still hot tho....first summer with them. These are in a garage that has an opening for the car to enter open without a door, so sort of open air. Thought about gluing some shower curtain magnets on some computer fans (four corners) and placing these on the lower sides of the inverters to help exhaust and maybe one on the top right reversed for inflow. Will take some time to build the garage a bit to close it up and run a split, thus the temporary attempts. Tried to lower setting 02 max charge current from default 120A to something like 20A since my batts were almost full around 2pm and thought 20A would still top them off by the end of the day, but the setting would not stick...even pressed the apply (return arrow btn) and it didn't change when exiting and going back in to confirm the setting change...may need to to change it in standby mode...too bad I cannot actively change this setting, would be nice to try to automate that with some code in Home Assistant.
 
hwy17 said:
I commissioned my system in April, so this is my first summer. I have an XW+ and MPPT 100 600 in a utility room with 2 external walls and no insulation, imagine basically the temperature of an unconditioned garage with the windows open.

My intention, so far, is that I will only provide ventilation and not air conditioning. And so far that consists of 2 open windows and a 120mm exhaust fan that sits above my equipment's exhaust, to try and suck that hot air out of the room.

Currently at 1pm, 89f/31c outside, inverter is pulling 4.3kW, and intake air temperature at the bottom of the inverter is 93f/34c.

It feels disconcerting, the body of the inverter is hot, and it makes me want to jump to add more ventilation. But, there's only a 3c difference between outdoor and indoor temps so what's more ventilation really going to do without cooling.

Doesn't help that I understand internally this inverter's got a paralleled pair of maybe 4awg wires between the fets and transformer primary that are pulling like 150+ amps under that load! But I'm not supposed to worry about that, those are internal wires that follow chassis wiring rules, and they have active chassis ventilation running over them.

I'm still continuing as planned, but I'm going to be operating closer to my inverter's derating charts. In a stronger heatwave of 104f/40c+ pulling more like 5kW for A/C I could even be looking at violating the threshold. So maybe I do need to start considering a window A/C backup for that event.
View attachment 219973
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My parallel 18Kpv units in a concrete building with open ceilings and soffet vents looks like this on a typical day. Not sure there’s anything to fix or any way to fix it other than to close off the ceiling in that room, put in a door, add a minisplit, and lose another 10-20 KWHR a day to cooling. #NotGoingToHappen
 

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wpns said:
My parallel 18Kpv units in a concrete building with open ceilings and soffet vents looks like this on a typical day. Not sure there’s anything to fix or any way to fix it other than to close off the ceiling in that room, put in a door, add a minisplit, and lose another 10-20 KWHR a day to cooling. #NotGoingToHappen
Click to expand...
Is that °Celsius?
Edit: Ignore me I can't read or spell
 
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