• Overview
• Specifications
• Buzz
• Download

User report:

• “The benefit of a cooler running system, higher efficiency and extended lifespan is a saving in maintenance, repair costs, operational running costs and downtime.” 
  

By Pat Farrelly, RTÉNL:

The main technical benefits of liquid cooling lie in the fact that the system and its components run much cooler than the traditional air cooled systems; generally resulting in an extended lifespan for the system.

The Ecreso liquid cooled transmitters were also slightly more efficient than the air cooled equivalent transmitters; thus there is a slight saving in operational expenditure. The benefit of a cooler running system, higher efficiency and extended lifespan is a saving in maintenance, repair costs, operational running costs and downtime.

The expected extended lifespan of the Ecreso liquid cooled FM systems has allowed economies in the level of spares required to maintain the system over its expected lifetime.  While the initial cost of the Ecreso liquid cooled FM systems was higher than the equivalent Ecreso air cool systems the expected payback time was estimated to be less than six years; this was acceptable as the systems would be expected to be maintained from 15 to 20 years.

 It is too early to say yet whether there will be a saving in maintenance time, effort and cost as the liquid cooled FM systems have only been running for just over one year, but the experience to date is that the maintenance requirements are minimum.

RTÉNL have been using traditional air-cooled Ecreso FM equipment for some years now and a good rapport has been built up between RTÉNL and the Ecreso team. RTÉNL have worked closely with Ecreso research and development department and have found that their commercial and technical support is very customer orientated.

The first installation of the liquid cooled FM systems took place at Mount Leinster, which is a mountain hilltop site in County Carlow, Ireland.  As with a lot of mountainous terrain and isolated sites the electricity supply to the station can and fluctuates, this unfortunately caused some problems during the installation and testing of the first set of liquid cooled FM systems.  Ecreso's technical team rose to the challenge and through tireless work and effort they, very quickly, succeeded in satisfying the overall specification requirements for the systems.

In conclusion RTÉNL have found that the consequential reduction in the noise levels in their transmitter halls and the cooler running of the FM transmitter systems is of great benefit from a health and safety point of view.  It must also be said that the introduction of isolation transformers to address the main fluctuation issues, discovered at Mount Leinster, introduces a single point of failure, but with the installation of electrical bypass systems the consequential effects of a possible transformer failure can be minimized.