An Edge-Enabled Lightweight LSTM for the Temperature Prediction of Electrical Joints in Low-Voltage Distribution Cabinets

Joint overheating in low-voltage distribution cabinets presents a major safety risk, often leading to insulation failure, accelerated aging, and even fires. Conventional threshold-based inspection methods are limited in detecting early temperature evolution and lack predictive capabilities. To address this, a short-term temperature prediction method for electrical joints based on deep learning is proposed. Using a self-developed sensing device and Raspberry Pi edge nodes, multi-source data-including voltage, current, power, and temperature-were collected and preprocessed. Comparative experiments with ARIMA, GRU, and LSTM models demonstrate that the LSTM achieves the highest prediction accuracy, with an RMSE, MAE, and MAPE of 0.26 °C, 0.21 °C, and 0.54%, respectively. Furthermore, a lightweight version of the model was optimized for edge deployment, achieving a comparable accuracy (RMSE = 0.27 °C, MAE = 0.21 °C, MAPE = 0.67%) while reducing the inference latency and memory cost. The model effectively captures temperature fluctuations during 6 h prediction tasks and maintains stability under different cabinet scenarios. These results confirm that the proposed edge-enabled lightweight LSTM model achieves a balanced trade-off between accuracy, real-time performance, and efficiency, providing a feasible technical solution for intelligent temperature monitoring and predictive maintenance in low-voltage distribution systems.