A cost effective and low environmental impact approach for climate control of outdoor electronic enclosures

The demand for energy-efficient cooling systems for use in telecommunications is rapidly increasing. After evaluating some of the alternatives to active cooling systems, the authors concentrated on the case of an outdoor cabinet and a cooling system based on a heat exchanger. To begin with, the airflow in a telecommunications outdoor enclosure was calculated with the help of a CFD simulation, which allowed a performance to be predicted. After that the monthly energy consumption of active and heat exchanger systems was evaluated for three places, one in northern, one in central and one in southern Italy. The study showed that energy savings about 50% are possible to achieve by replacing active cooling systems with systems based on heat exchangers. Other benefits are that the climate system availability will be higher due to decreased number of moving parts and the initial investment is also lower for a heat exchanger system. The most environmentally friendly kWh is a saved kWh. It is also important to remember that the heat exchanger solution does not require any use of CFCs.