The environmental policy of the European Union is boosting the development of renewable energies. Among these, bioenergy holds the main share and is expected to further increase. Such development requires a higher degree of efficiency in the whole supply chain. This is achieved also with an enhanced fuel quality control and a better matching with the energy conversion systems. For solid biofuels, moisture content is the main quality parameters, influencing the sustainability of the whole energy system. With the aim to provide a real-time and portable tool for moisture measurement, a hand-held near infrared spectrometer was tested on a dataset of 817 wood chip samples provided by an industrial facility. A set of key performance parameters were used to compare the estimation of three alternative prediction models and the standard oven dry method. Results show a satisfactory reliability with R2 ranging from 0.86 to 0.89 depending on the model. A single measure can be acquired in few seconds, and the potential to