Online temperature monitoring of a grid connected induction motor

This paper proposes a novel method for continuous temperature measurement of the stator winding of an induction machine. The method is based on measuring stator winding resistance by injecting a DC current test signal into the motor neutral point without interrupting its normal operation. The entire stator winding is used as a sensor without additional thermal sensors, while DC voltage and current need to be measured solely. Virtually equal currents are injected in each phase thereby minimizing the influence on the motor torque inherent to contemporary signal injection-based methods. The measurement results obtained using the proposed method are compared to results obtained using the standard resistance-based method and direct measurements obtained from thermocouples embedded in the windings. An excellent match is achieved under various loading levels and variable cooling conditions, thus proving the accuracy and robustness of the proposed method.