Abstract The increased integration of wind power into electric power systems presents new challenges for effective planning and operation of these systems. The Weibull distribution is a widely used distribution, especially for modelling the random variable of wind speed. In this respect, the authors present a comparative analysis of a number of methods used for estimating Weibull parameters. Results for a real-world database are presented in a case study format. The techniques require historical wind speed data, collected over a particular time interval, to establish the parameters of wind speed distribution for a specific location, namely Cape Town, South Africa