Which power station will run my appliances?

A station is two numbers: watts decide what you can switch on, watt-hours decide how long it stays on.

Size a machine for your loads →

Already know the machine and want to know how long it lasts? The runtime calculator puts any of these records against the same list of loads.

The bar under each figure is that machine's share of 4,000 W and 4,096 Wh — the largest inverter and the largest battery on this page. The surge figure has no bar: there is no published ceiling to measure one against.

How these cards are grouped, and where their figures come from

The cards are grouped by watt-hours because that is the number that does not change when you change your mind about the appliance.

Each row links to that machine’s own record, where every figure carries the tier and the date it was verified on. For some of these builds we have found no surge ceiling at all; those rows say so rather than showing a floor this site worked out for itself.

Under 500 Wh 4 machines

Phone, laptop, router, a string of lights, a CPAP for part of a night. Small enough to carry in one hand, and too small to argue with a heating element.

500–1,500 Wh 4 machines

The size most people are looking at when they say "power outage": a fridge overnight, the internet up, and one high-draw appliance at a time if the inverter is big enough.

1,500–2,500 Wh 4 machines

Enough energy for a day of essentials and enough inverter for a motor load — an RV air conditioner, a washing machine, a well pump — rather than only for electronics.

2,500 Wh and up 2 machines

Whole-circuit territory. These are heavy, they are expandable, and they are bought for multi-day outages or for a small off-grid system rather than for a trip.

Elsewhere on the site