In order to improve the accuracy of identifying overheating faults in electrical equipment and shorten the response time, a method for identifying overheating faults in electrical equipment based on infrared technology is proposed. Firstly, infrared images of electrical equipment are collected through an infrared scanner. Secondly, in order to improve the quality of infrared images, feature extraction is performed on the collected infrared images. Finally, the infrared image is enhanced through nonlinear NSCT transformation, and the identification of overheating faults and defects in electrical equipment is completed by calculating the relative temperature difference of the tested electrical equipment. The experimental results show that compared to existing fault identification methods, this method can accurately identify overheating faults of various electrical equipment, and the identification time response is significantly shortened.