Category Bar Chart Widget

Introduction

Description

The Category Bar Chart Widget is a horizontal bar chart visualization used to display aggregated or real-time metric values for a single asset, grouped by custom-defined categories. Functionally similar to the Asset Metric Chart Widget, it presents each metric as a horizontal bar, allowing users to compare multiple data points side-by-side within grouped categories for improved readability and insight.

Purpose

This widget helps renewable energy professionals analyze and compare multiple metrics within a single asset. By grouping metrics into logical categories, users can better understand the distribution of values and identify dominant contributors to performance issues or inefficiencies.

Target Audience

• Business Users: Asset managers, performance analysts, and operations leads seeking a clear breakdown of asset-level metrics by category.

• Technical Users: Engineers and dashboard designers configuring diagnostic views for loss analysis or performance summaries.

Key Features & Use Cases

1. Horizontal Bar Layout

Displays each metric as a horizontal bar, improving readability—especially when comparing many values.

Use Case – Solar Inverter Loss Breakdown
A dashboard shows weekly energy losses for a single inverter, grouped into:

• Environmental Losses: Temperature, Shading, Snow  

• Forced Losses: Grid, Balance of Plant (BOP), System Faults
  This layout allows asset managers to quickly identify which loss types are most significant.

2. Category Grouping

Metrics can be grouped into user-defined categories for clearer organization and contextual analysis.

3. Metric Comparison for a Single Asset

Designed to compare multiple metrics for one asset, making it ideal for detailed asset-level analysis.

Use Case – Wind Turbine Downtime Analysis
A dashboard shows downtime hours grouped by cause (e.g., Grid Curtailment, Mechanical Fault, Weather) for a single turbine. This helps operations teams focus on the most frequent downtime drivers.

Widget Use in BI App Types

Use in Dashboards

The Category Bar Chart Widget is available exclusively in Dashboard BI Apps, where it provides granular, asset-level breakdowns of performance metrics. It is particularly useful for diagnostic views and operational summaries.

Note: This widget is not available in Reports. For historical comparisons across categories in reports, consider using tabular summaries or time-series visualizations grouped by category.