Medium voltage switching or controlgear monitoring system

A medium voltage switchgear or controlgear monitoring method, comprising:

• acquiring an infrared image with infrared camera mounted within a medium voltage switchgear or controlgear, wherein the infrared image comprises image data of two or three current carrying parts of the switchgear or control gear, and wherein the two or three current carrying parts are the same current carry part of two or three equivalent systems within the switchgear or controlgear;
• providing a processing unit with the infrared image;
• determining by the processing unit that the two or three current carrying parts are operating correctly or that one of the two or three current carrying parts has a fault, wherein the determining comprises analysing the infrared image by an autoencoder implemented by the processing unit;
• and
• utilizing the infrared image by the autoencoder to generate a synthetic infrared image,
• wherein the synthetic infrared image comprises synthetic image data of the two or three current carrying parts of the switchgear or control gear, and
• wherein the determining that the two or three current carrying parts are operating correctly or that one of the two or three current carrying parts has a fault comprises comparing the infrared image with the synthetic infrared image based on a distance metric between at least one region of the infrared image and an equivalent at least one region of the synthetic infrared image, comparing the distance metric to a threshold value, and triggering an alarm if the distance metric is equal to or exceeds a threshold value.