This may sound silly but ...

A company I have been invested in for a decade and deals in torque sensors with firms like GM , has introduced out of left-field a real-time temperature sensor for mounting on the busbar and cables in switchgear cabinets. Fortunately it reads them remotely so there are no wires to make the cabinet more dangerous.

Obviously arc flash would be catastrophic and this sensor is for monitoring rather than flash mitigation. I was curious from my in depth reading over the past few months on matters electrical whether the team here thinks intermittent arc flashing due to poor insulators or bad atmosphere would be sufficient to raise a temperature significantly say more than a tenth C in the cabinet [or one part of the cabinet].

Sorry if this is not really the right place for the question. I am not trying to push it - it is doing nicely on its own - it was just a niggly question needing answering.

TIA

Temperature sensing tends to be best at picking up bad connections (increased resistance). Once you get above 2-3 kV where insulation failures show up as corona/tracking damage it is useless. Intermittent failures are just that...if it's a short time interval you won't get appreciable heat buildup.

Thats where PD surveys come in handy.