When assembling control cabinets, things have to move quickly. Components must be installed as easily as possible using the plug & play principle - the fewer steps the better. With this in mind, Rittal has developed a new integration concept in the sense of a symbiosis of enclosure and matching climate control technology. The solution provides for two different approaches: on the one hand, the concept of a horizontal slide-in solution in the roof area and, on the other, that of a vertical, lateral slide-in solution.

In the horizontal slide-in solution, a 2 kW cooling unit with Blue e+ technology with a height of 400 mm is simply slid into the upper section of the enclosure on rails - without any installation work or cut-outs. The TS8 enclosure with a width of 800 mm and a depth of 600 mm serves as the basis. As the air inlet and outlet are located at the front of the cooling unit, no minimum distances are required to the side of the enclosure or to the rear.

The side concept is a narrow slide-in solution for a 2.5 kW cooling unit with Blue e+ technology with a module width of 300 mm for single cabinets or rows of cabinets for one-sided cooling. The TS8 enclosure with a height of 2000 mm and a depth of 600 mm also serves as the basis. Widely spaced air openings ensure optimum air flow. The baying of enclosures is still possible without any problems, as with conventional solutions.

The Blue e+ technology works with a combination of a compressor cooling unit and a heat pipe, which ensures passive cooling. Thanks to inverter technology, which allows the speed of the compressor and fan to be adjusted via voltage regulation, the exact cooling capacity that is currently required is always provided.

The cooling units can be inserted by the manufacturer using Plug&Play, so that control and switchgear engineers only need to make the electrical connection - a significant time saving. In other words: "The cooling unit is part of the enclosure and no longer a classic component that has to be installed in a time-consuming process," says Steffen Wagner, Head of Climate Control at Rittal.