What is the right time scale for wind farm performance?

Wind farm performance analysis is not only about looking at more data. It is about looking at performance at the right scale.

In practice, available information ranges from individual measurements to long-term results. Some questions require data-level detail to understand events and turbine behaviour. Others require monthly consolidation to account for external condition variability and what can realistically be acted on.

The key is knowing which time scale fits each question and how to move between them without losing clarity. Teams naturally focus either on detailed operational signals or on aggregated KPIs. Taken in isolation, both perspectives leave important parts of the performance picture unresolved.

Measurement level: explaining what happened

At the most granular level, raw data is used to explain specific events.

Measurements and time series can replay specific events, connect signals to context (turbine status, maintenance actions, external conditions, weather events) and capture transient behaviour during start-ups, shutdowns or wake-driven operation. This level is essential for verifying hypotheses and confirming root causes.

It clarifies event mechanisms before shifting to diagnosis, prioritisation and performance quantification at longer time scales.

Fig. 1: ExpertWind Insights allows replaying turbine operation for specific events in context, helping interpret transient operation and sudden performance changes.

Daily to weekly: detecting and diagnosing issues

When data is aggregated over days or weeks, operational behaviour becomes comparable and diagnostic signals stabilise.

This is where analysis supports early detection: spotting emerging operational issues, identifying abnormal patterns and isolating which turbines are diverging from expected behaviour. It is also the right time scale to confirm whether a suspected issue persists and to characterise how often, how long and under which conditions it appears.

It enables confident diagnosis and faster reaction, before stepping back to quantify performance, losses and priorities at the monthly level.

Fig. 2: ExpertWind Insights diagnostics quantify key operational issues over daily to weekly periods, track their evolution over time and trigger alerts when thresholds are exceeded or when significant changes are detected.

Monthly scale: quantifying performance and deciding what matters

Monthly analysis is where performance can be consolidated into results that support asset-level decisions.

At this time scale, performance, energy yield and losses can be quantified with enough stability to account for external condition variability. It becomes possible to see recurring effects such as wake interactions or operational constraints and to track how performance evolves from month to month in a consistent way.

Monthly consolidation turns signals and diagnostics into a clear performance picture: what changed, what drove it and what deserves priority in the plan of action.

Fig. 3: ExpertWind Insights provides monthly performance summaries that combine high-level KPIs with the key issues behind the results, linking consolidated monthly outcomes to diagnostics, alerts and follow-up actions.

How ExpertWind connects these time scales

ExpertWind Insights is built to support performance work across time scales, from event understanding to issue detection and monthly performance tracking.

Our latest release in January 2026 reinforced this structure end to end: Farm Replay and redesigned stop timelines strengthen event-level investigation, new diagnostics and improved alert tracking support daily to weekly monitoring and the monthly layer was expanded with Farm Intelligence, Farm States and an improved Overview highlighting top issues across farms and fleets.

Together, these additions connect consolidated results to underlying evidence and actionable follow-up, so performance discussions move naturally from understanding to prioritisation and improvement.

This is the foundation we are building to turn wind farm performance data into clear, actionable decisions across all levels of operation.

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Ready to see our approach in practice? Explore ExpertWind Insights, learn more about wind performance or schedule a demo to walk through a real performance analysis.