halfhourly

Halfhourly is an adjective and adverb describing something that occurs at or every 30 minutes. The term is used in scheduling, data collection, and billing contexts where time is divided into half-hour intervals. In practice, halfhourly data points capture values at 00 and 30 minutes past each hour, providing higher temporal resolution than hourly measurements.

Spelling variants include half-hourly (with a hyphen) and halfhourly (without). The form half-hourly is common in British English, while halfhourly appears in American usage as well, and both forms are understood in many professional contexts.

In electricity markets, halfhourly metering records consumption in 30-minute intervals, enabling more precise billing and grid management. Such metering is typically applied to larger commercial and industrial customers or for settlements and time-of-use tariffs, where finer time resolution informs pricing and reliability decisions. Outside energy, halfhourly data are used in scheduling and operations planning to reflect sub-hourly fluctuations.

In data processing and scheduling, halfhourly data support tasks such as load forecasting, demand response analysis, and scheduling decisions that respond to fluctuations within an hour. While the higher resolution improves accuracy and responsiveness, it also increases data storage and processing requirements and can raise privacy concerns when usage patterns become more detailed. The term remains practical and industry-specific, with exact usage varying by sector and jurisdiction.