The vent fans on my solar enclosure are running a lot, drawing a lot of power from my small and limited system, and I'm trying to mitigate that. My thoughts are below, and any of these may solve my issue, but please offer suggestions.
1. What temp do you folks feel comfy running your LV2424s at? Manual says max of 55c/131F, but I'd rather not run electronics that hot. Usually it's not an issue in my mild climate, we only see 100+ temps for less than a week per year, and saw 115F, for a couple hours, as a once in a lifetime event. I have the enclosure fan thermostat set to turn on at 95F, I could bump that up to 110F and the fans might turn on twice a year, and then only when the enclosure is heated by the inverters.
2. Can anyone recommend an off the shelf differential thermostat? If it's 95F inside the solar enclosure and 105F outside the enclosure, I don't want the fans turning on. If it's 103F inside and outside the enclosure, I don't want the fans running then either. My current setup runs the fans any time the temp is over 95F.
3. Another potential solution would be more efficient fans. I don't actually mind the fans running, but they draw ~180w, which is quite a bit for my small system, plus they're running from 2pm until sometime after I go to bed. Due to shading from a tree, my solar production drops off quite a bit around 5pm this time of year, so there's a significant draw, long after solar production has dropped off, which may not be needed after all. If the fans only drew 20w, I'd be a lot less annoyed with them running so much. I arranged the intake and exhaust vents on the enclosure so there's good natural convection with any kind of temperature differential, doubt I need as much air movement as I have right now.
Thank you all.
1. What temp do you folks feel comfy running your LV2424s at? Manual says max of 55c/131F, but I'd rather not run electronics that hot. Usually it's not an issue in my mild climate, we only see 100+ temps for less than a week per year, and saw 115F, for a couple hours, as a once in a lifetime event. I have the enclosure fan thermostat set to turn on at 95F, I could bump that up to 110F and the fans might turn on twice a year, and then only when the enclosure is heated by the inverters.
2. Can anyone recommend an off the shelf differential thermostat? If it's 95F inside the solar enclosure and 105F outside the enclosure, I don't want the fans turning on. If it's 103F inside and outside the enclosure, I don't want the fans running then either. My current setup runs the fans any time the temp is over 95F.
3. Another potential solution would be more efficient fans. I don't actually mind the fans running, but they draw ~180w, which is quite a bit for my small system, plus they're running from 2pm until sometime after I go to bed. Due to shading from a tree, my solar production drops off quite a bit around 5pm this time of year, so there's a significant draw, long after solar production has dropped off, which may not be needed after all. If the fans only drew 20w, I'd be a lot less annoyed with them running so much. I arranged the intake and exhaust vents on the enclosure so there's good natural convection with any kind of temperature differential, doubt I need as much air movement as I have right now.
Thank you all.
