A small house with its windows lit under heavy storm clouds, the sort of evening when the power might go out

Guide

Power station for a home blackout

Short answer: about 1,000Wh keeps your fridge and a lamp going overnight. It won’t run your furnace or central air.

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Start by listing what you’d want running. A modern fridge often draws 100–200W while the compressor runs, and much less while it rests. Your router is a few watts, and a 9W LED lamp barely registers. Watt-hours decide how long that mix lasts, and continuous watts decide whether the fridge will start at all.

The EcoFlow DELTA 3 is the size we’d keep for a short outage: 1,024Wh, 1,800W continuous, 27.6 lb. Keep the fridge shut, skip the toaster, and in many kitchens you’ll cover the evening and the night. For a two-day outage with no way to recharge, you’d want a bigger station or an add-on battery.

See current price on Amazon — EcoFlow DELTA 3 on amazon.com

A dark room during a power cut, lit only by a small lantern on the windowsill

What this size won’t do

Window air conditioners, space heaters and electric dryers are beyond most portable stations. Even the BLUETTI AC200PL at 2,304Wh and 2,400W continuous won’t run central air, and at 63.5 lb it’ll live on your kitchen floor.

Skip if

If you need a well pump, a furnace blower you haven’t measured, or a window AC that runs near the inverter limit, read the nameplate first. And if all you want is charged phones, a power bank will do.

If you’d like to refill from panels on the porch, look at solar input (500W on the DELTA 3, 600W on the SOLIX C1000 Gen 2, 1,200W on the AC200PL). Cloud cuts that down, so we’d charge from the wall before the storm arrives.

See current price on Amazon — EcoFlow DELTA 3 on amazon.com Find a station

What size power station do you need to run a refrigerator?

Short answer: 1,000Wh gets a kitchen fridge through roughly 5 hours at a 150W average, and 2,000Wh gets you roughly 11 hours. The inverter should be at least 1,000W so the fridge’s start-up surge doesn’t trip it.

For a longer outage we’d look at the Jackery Explorer 2000 v2, which is 39.5 lb, or the Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2, which takes an add-on battery. The EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus is the 1kWh pick if you want a switchover under 10 ms for a router or desktop.

Station	Capacity	Kitchen fridge at 150W	Wi-Fi router at 10W
EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus	1,024Wh	about 5 hours	about 87 hours
Jackery Explorer 1000 v2	1,070Wh	about 6 hours	about 90 hours
Jackery Explorer 2000 v2	2,042Wh	about 11 hours	about 173 hours
Anker SOLIX C2000 Gen 2	2,048Wh	about 11 hours	about 174 hours