Monitoring system for a low voltage, medium voltage, or high voltage circuit breaker

1. A circuit breaker monitoring system, comprising:

a vibration sensor;

a processing unit; and

an output unit;

wherein the vibration sensor is configured to be mounted to a circuit breaker;

wherein the vibration sensor is configured to acquire a temporal vibration signal over at least a temporal portion of a closing operation of the circuit breaker, wherein the closing operation comprises: initiation of the closing operation, latch release, movement of a moveable contact towards a fixed contact, contact touch of the moveable contact with the fixed contact, and stop of movement of the moveable contact;

wherein the vibration sensor is configured to provide the temporal vibration signal to the processing unit;

wherein the processing unit is configured to determine a plurality of features of the closing operation, wherein each feature is associated with one of: the initiation of the closing operation, the latch release, the movement of the moveable contact towards the fixed contact, the contact touch of the moveable contact with the fixed contact, and the stop of movement of the moveable contact, wherein the determination comprises analysis of the temporal vibration signal to identify a plurality of changes in the temporal vibration signal that are assigned to the plurality of features of the closing operation;

wherein the processing unit is configured to determine an indication of operational functionality of the circuit breaker, wherein the determination comprises utilization of the plurality of features of the closing operation; and

wherein the output unit is configured to output information relating to the indication of operational functionality of the circuit breaker.

2. Circuit breaker monitoring system according to claim 1 , wherein analysis of the temporal vibration signal to identify a plurality of changes in the temporal vibration signal comprises computation of a temporal signal envelope from the temporal vibration signal and wherein identification of the plurality of changes in the temporal vibration signal comprises identification of a plurality of changes in the temporal signal envelope that are assigned to the plurality of features of the closing operation.

3. The circuit breaker monitoring system according to claim 2 , wherein the processing unit is configured to implement a peak transform, an RMS transform, or a Hilbert transform to compute the temporal signal envelope from the temporal vibration signal.

4. The circuit breaker monitoring system according to claim 1 , wherein analysis of the temporal vibration signal to identify a plurality of changes in the temporal vibration signal that are assigned to the plurality of features of the closing operation comprises utilization of one of: descriptive statistics; Transforms; machine learning or artificial intelligence; characteristic times associated with the closing operation of the circuit breaker.

5. The circuit breaker monitoring system according to claim 4 , wherein descriptive statistics is one of: mean, RMS, or Kurtosis analysis; and wherein Transforms is one of: FFT, Wavelets, empirical mode decomposition, Hilbert-Huang-Transform.

6. The circuit breaker monitoring system according to claim 4 , wherein the processing unit is configured to determine a plurality of physical switch events and corresponding plurality of time points of the plurality of physical switch events over the closing operation of the circuit breaker, wherein the determination comprises analysis of the temporal vibration signal to identify a plurality of changes in the temporal vibration signal that are assigned to the plurality of physical switch events, and Wherein the processing unit is configured to determine the one or more characteristic times associated with the closing operation of the circuit breaker comprising utilization of the plurality of physical switch events and corresponding plurality of time points.

7. The circuit breaker monitoring system according to claim 6 , wherein the processing unit is configured to implement a change point detection algorithm, a piecewise linear approximation algorithm, a cluster based method, or a state space representation to identify the plurality of change points in the temporal signal envelope that are assigned to the plurality of physical switch events.

8. The circuit breaker monitoring system according to claim 7 , wherein the cluster based method is a Gaussian Mixture Model “GMM”, or a Hidden Markov Model “HMM”; and wherein the state space representation is a Kalman Filter or Likelihood Ratio Method.

9. The circuit breaker monitoring system according to claim 6 , wherein the physical switch events comprises two or more of: instant of latch release; instant of onset of movement of the moveable contact towards the fixed contact; instant of contact touch of the moveable contact with the fixed contact; instant of stop of movement of the moveable contact.

10. The circuit breaker monitoring system according to claim 2 , wherein computation of the temporal signal envelope from the temporal vibration signal comprises a low pass filtering and/or a high pass filtering before and/or after computation of the temporal signal envelope.

11. The circuit breaker monitoring system according to claim 1 , wherein determination of the indication of operational functionality of the circuit breaker comprises a comparison of the plurality of features of the closing operation with corresponding baseline features for one or more calibration circuit breakers.

12. Circuit breaker monitoring system, comprising:

a vibration sensor;

a processing unit; and

an output unit;

wherein the vibration sensor is configured to be mounted to a circuit breaker;

wherein the vibration sensor is configured to acquire a temporal vibration signal over at least a temporal portion of an opening operation of the circuit breaker, wherein the opening operation comprises: initiation of the opening operation, latch release, movement of a moveable contact away from a fixed contact, separation of the moveable contact from the fixed contact, stop of movement of the moveable contact;

wherein the vibration sensor is configured to provide the temporal vibration signal to the processing unit;

wherein the processing unit is configured to determine a plurality of features of the opening operation, wherein each feature is associated with one of: the initiation of the opening operation, the latch release, the movement of the moveable contact away from the fixed contact, the separation of the moveable contact from the fixed contact, the stop of movement of the moveable contact, wherein the determination comprises analysis of the temporal vibration signal to identify a plurality of changes in the temporal vibration signal that are assigned to the plurality of features of the opening operation;

wherein the processing unit is configured to determine an indication of operational functionality of the circuit breaker, wherein the determination comprises utilization of the plurality of features of the opening operation; and

wherein the output unit is configured to output information relating to the indication of operational functionality of the circuit breaker.

13. A circuit breaker monitoring method, comprising:

providing a vibration sensor mounted to a circuit breaker;

acquiring by the vibration sensor a temporal vibration signal over at least a temporal portion of a closing operation of the circuit breaker, wherein the closing operation comprises: initiation of the closing operation, latch release, movement of a moveable contact towards a fixed contact, contact touch of the moveable contact with the fixed contact, and stop of movement of the moveable contact;

providing the temporal vibration signal to a processing unit;

determining by the processing unit a plurality of features of the closing operation, wherein each feature is associated with one of: the initiation of the closing operation, the latch release, the movement of the moveable contact towards the fixed contact, the contact touch of the moveable contact with the fixed contact, and the stop of movement of the moveable contact, wherein the determining comprises analysis of the temporal vibration signal to identify a plurality of changes in the temporal vibration signal that are assigned to the plurality of features of the closing operation;

determining by the processing unit an indication of operational functionality of the circuit breaker; wherein the determining comprises utilization of the plurality of features of the closing operation; and

outputting by an output unit information relating to the indication of operational functionality of the circuit breaker.

14. A circuit breaker monitoring method, comprising:

providing a vibration sensor mounted to a circuit breaker;

acquiring by the vibration sensor a temporal vibration signal over at least a temporal portion of an opening operation of the circuit breaker, wherein the opening operation comprises: initiation of the opening operation, latch release, movement of a moveable contact away from a fixed contact, separation of the moveable contact from the fixed contact, stop of movement of the moveable contact;

providing the temporal vibration signal to a processing unit;

determining by the processing unit a plurality of features of the opening operation, wherein each feature is associated with one of the initiation of the opening operation, the latch release, the movement of the moveable contact away from the fixed contact, the separation of the moveable contact from the fixed contact, the stop of movement of the moveable contact, wherein the determination comprises analysis of the temporal vibration signal to identify a plurality of changes in the temporal vibration signal that are assigned to the plurality of features of the opening operation;

determining by the processing unit an indication of operational functionality of the circuit breaker, wherein the determination comprises utilizing the plurality of features of the opening operation; and

outputting by an output unit information relating to the indication of operational functionality of the circuit breaker.