Monitoring of Stator Winding Insulation Degradation through Estimation of Stator Winding Temperature and Leakage Current

Switched Reluctance Motors (SRMs), Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors (PMSMs), and induction motors may experience failures due to insulation-related breakdowns. The SRM rotor is of a non-salient nature and made of solid steel material. There are no windings on the rotor. However, the stator is composed of windings that are intricately insulated from each other using materials such as enamel wire, polymer films, mica tapes, epoxy resin, varnishes, or insulating tapes. The dielectric strength of the insulation may fail over time due to several environmental factors and processes. Dielectric breakdown of the winding insulation can be caused by rapid switching of the winding current, the presence of contaminants, and thermal aging. For reliable and efficient operation of the SRMs and other electrical machines, it is necessary to take into account the physics of the winding insulation and perform appropriate diagnostics and estimations that can monitor the integrity of the insulation. This article presents the estimation problem using a Genetic Algorithm (GA)-optimized Random Forest Regressor. Empirical properties and measurable quantities in the historical data are utilized to derive temperature and leakage current estimation. The developed model is then combined with a moving average function to increase the accuracy of prediction of the stator winding temperature and leakage current. The performance of the model is compared with that of the Feedforward Neural Network and Long Short-Term Memory over the same winding temperature and leakage current historical data. The performance metrics are based on computation of the Mean Square Error and Mean Absolute Error.