high-voltage mppt controllers?

I'm in the desert, no moisture unless you consider 36% humidity moisture which for us it is. LOL! Dust? Got PLENTY of that but not much where my controller will be mounted (Inverter AND converter with their fans are in there too. Inverter is 3 years old now. I assume the converter is 5 years old but I believe it spent 3 years its life in Texas).

No bad luck (yet)
Just a strong preference for no moving parts if at all possible

My (old) purchased new 1998 Dell laptop is still going strong with the original fans and hard drive (moving parts that get used everyday) ....... Only problem with it is that the RAM and Processor are being tasked beyond their abilities with all the XP updates now along comes Windows 7/8.1 not sure what's going to happen

Is there a RV with out dust and moisture?
One time I returned from a month long RV / Fishing trip the silver ware drawer had a huge amount of dust inside .. Not sure where it might have come from

2oldman wrote:

GordonThree wrote:
By being properly designed. It shouldn't heat up, so it doesn't need to cool down.

Jees, I thought Outback was a pretty decent brand. Just perused the MS manual. Nice unit, no doubt, and nothing in there about heat.

By saying it shouldn't heat up, do you mean not even warm?

Yes, I would expect it to get warm, especially handling 1000+ watts of power, even at 90% efficiency, that's still 100 watts of heat to get rid of ... but it shouldn't runaway where it just keeps getting hotter and hotter and needs "fresh air" or a large airflow.

50/50 for fans ... if they're good fans with sealed bearings, cool, but if they're using China Special 5 cent roller bearing fans that start to chew dust after 1000 hours operation, no thanks.

I'm thinking the Outback and Midnight were designed for being installed in larger electrical rooms. The big heat sink on the MorningStar tells me they planned for installs in space limited RV bays and other less than ideal locations.

I'll email Midnite and ask if they can elaborate on their 25C de-rate, maybe they can give me a graph showing amp capacity vs ambient temperature.

KJINTF wrote:
Good luck keeping that nasty dust, dirt and humidity out of the fan

Shouldn't be a problem. Every solar controller installation manual I've read stated to mount in an indoor environment free of dust and moisture.

KJINTF wrote:
It's only a matter of time

Well, yeah, that's true for anything. Sounds like you've had some bad luck with fans. I myself, have not.

Good luck keeping that nasty dust, dirt and humidity out of the fan - if you do things will be good for a while ...... It's only a matter of time

Just saying
Moving parts have a higher failure rate than properly designed solid state parts

A good brush less DC Fan will go several years when properly maintained

The inclusion of a fan does not mean it will automatically fail. Every single one of your computers have fans and tons of other things fail on them long before the fans do. I can't remember the last time I had a fan fail on a computer.

I think most guys that have familiarity with electronics will choose fanless with big heat sinks over a more compact chassis with a fan. The reason that there is heat to dissipate is the use of larger current carrying devices like MOSFET's, IC's, and transistor regulators. All of those will heat up when passing current and need a heatsink interface. It's sometimes more elegant to use a larger heatsink than using smaller ones and a fan.

GordonThree wrote:
By being properly designed. It shouldn't heat up, so it doesn't need to cool down.

Jees, I thought Outback was a pretty decent brand. Just perused the MS manual. Nice unit, no doubt, and nothing in there about heat.

By saying it shouldn't heat up, do you mean not even warm?

KJINTF wrote:
.. it's only a matter of time before the fan goes south.

My Prosine (as probably 99% of inverters) had a fan, outlasted the inverter itself. My Samlex inverter has two fans. Thus I'm not real concerned about losing the fan in my Outback 60a. If it's a matter of time, it's probably a really long time.

Sure has a lot of cooling fins on it for a thing that doesn't get warm. I bet it still needs air flow, clearance mounting.