Transfer learning by fine-tuning pre-trained convolutional neural network architectures for switchgear fault detection using thermal imaging

Switchgear is a vital component of modern power systems, responsible for regulating the flow of electrical power. Contact issues, irregular loads, and other similar problems can cause switchgear to overheat, leading to unexpected disturbances and potential damage to the power equipment. Thermal imaging shows significant potential and is increasingly employed to detect faults in power equipment. However, the unique characteristics of thermal images often pose challenges to accurate fault detection. This research aims to study the effectiveness of transfer learning architectures for switchgear fault detection. This paper applies eleven transfer learning architectures, including SqueezeNet, GoogLeNet, InceptionV3, DenseNet201, ResNet50, Xception, InceptionResNetV2, ShuffleNet, EfficientNetB0, AlexNet, and VGG19. The results of the testing phase demonstrated that the application of transfer learning by fine-tuning pre-trained convolutional neural network architectures was highly effective in the classification of thermal images captured from switchgear units. The models achieved accuracy rates between 83.87% and 98.38%, and values of F₁-Scores between 83.11% and 98.34% in the pre-trained architectures.