Power Stations

A portable power station is the easiest backup power you can buy and the easiest to buy wrong. The capacity printed on the case is not the capacity you get, the appliance list on the box assumes nothing else is plugged in, and cold weather changes the answer again.

This section works through what each class of station will genuinely run, and for how long. Watt-hours against amp-hours, and why usable capacity is always lower than rated. What a 1,000Wh unit does with a refrigerator overnight and what a 2,000Wh unit adds. LiFePO4 against NMC on cycle life, weight and freezing temperatures. Pure sine wave, and which appliances actually care. How you recharge one when the outage runs to three days.

Runtimes here are calculated from published specifications with the assumptions stated and the arithmetic shown. We do not have a test bench, and we never present a specification as a measurement.