The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) has admitted pollution monitors around the Mossmorran gas plant in Fife have been faulty.
SEPA figures have revealed at least one of the site's three monitoring stations was not working during a 13-day period in January.
These air quality monitors had been put up in Auchtertool, Donibristle and Lochgelly.
The watchdog reported the monitors in Auchtertool and Donibristle had been down for ten whole days, according to the BBC.
Faults with the units' solar-powered data loggers have been blamed with the report saying: "Analysers run on mains power but the data logger attached to them runs on solar power and this has resulted in intermittent data".
The equipment has been installed to record air quality around controversial petrochemical site following concerns from local residents over several unplanned flaring events.
It comes after flaring saw the skies to the north of Edinburgh lit up red and orange last week, with some saying it is the most intense event they have seen so far.
The latest flaring was part of a process to restart the plant and led to a high volume of calls to the environmental watchdog.
However, SEPA insisted that initial data suggested there was "no breach of UK Air Quality Standard".
A spokeswoman for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency said: "Sepa is committed to both fully monitoring the restart of the Fife site with regulatory, noise and air monitoring capabilities across local communities whilst addressing the root causes of 'unacceptable flaring'.
"These are supported by a backup mobile air modelling unit located on a local farm to ensure a continuous flow of data.
"There have been 10 days since deployment where power issues on an individual unit has reset the unit.
"This is a control process to ensure no erroneous data is recorded.
"On each occasion there has been backup data from the ring of fixed and mobile monitors and there are no days where data as a whole has not been available."
