Patent attributes
An aerosol provision system comprises a heating element for generating an aerosol from a source liquid and control circuitry for controlling a supply of electrical power from a power supply to the heating element. The control circuitry is configured to measure an indication of a derivative of an electrical characteristic of the heating element with respect to time. Based on the measured time derivative, the control circuitry is configured to determine whether or not a fault condition has arisen for the electronic aerosol provision system. The overall change in the electrical characteristic for the heating element caused by the localized heating may be small and so difficult to reliably identify, but the rate at which the change occurs can be expected to be relatively high, such that the time derivative of the local characteristic is a more reliable indicator of occurrence of the fault condition.