What Size Power Station Do You Need for a Hurricane?

Before landfall

Ready.gov’s outage guidance says to keep phones and other electronics charged before an outage, plan for other ways to charge them, and decide in advance what you’ll plug in, because you may not be able to power everything at once. That last point is the whole idea behind the kits above.

• Charge the power station to 100% while you still have grid power, and top up every power bank and spare battery.
• Set the station’s AC outlet timeout to “never” if it will run a fridge, so it doesn’t switch off while the compressor rests.
• Put a thermometer in the fridge and the freezer, and have ice ready to help keep them cold, as Ready.gov suggests.
• Fill the car’s tank. Ready.gov recommends it before predicted extreme weather.

Food in the fridge and freezer

Ready.gov puts it simply: a closed refrigerator keeps food cold for about 4 hours, and a full freezer holds a safe temperature for about 48 hours. Refrigerated food that sat at 40°F or above for more than 4 hours should be thrown out.

The fridge is also the single biggest load in a normal outage kit, yet it averages only about 58 W because the compressor cycles. That’s why the first kit uses it for 24 hours. Our refrigerator page shows runtimes for every model and which stations can’t start one. Running it a few hours at a time, with the door shut in between, stretches a smaller battery much further.

Generators and carbon monoxide

The National Weather Service calls carbon monoxide poisoning one of the leading causes of death after storms in areas without power. CDC studies after the 2004 Florida hurricanes found portable generators behind 47 of the 49 nonfatal poisoning incidents with a known source, and all 5 fatal ones. About a third of those generators were in a garage, and another third were outdoors, often near windows or window air conditioners. After Katrina and Rita in 2005, a portable generator was involved in 25 of the 27 incidents CDC investigated in Alabama and Texas.

If you run a gas generator, the CDC says never inside the home or garage, even with doors and windows open, and more than 20 feet from windows, doors and vents. A power station has no exhaust and can sit indoors, which is the main reason many people keep one even when they also own a generator.

Sump pumps and recharging after the storm

A sump pump is the hardest common load here. A 1/2 HP pump needs about 2,150 W for an instant every time the float trips, and in steady rain it can use more energy than everything else combined. The third kit’s table shows how much battery one rainy day of it takes, and our sump pump page lists which can start a pump at all.

Once the storm passes, sunny days often return while crews are still restoring lines. A 200 W panel at our default 4.5 peak sun hours returns about 675 Wh a day, about half of what the second kit uses (most of it is the fan). Work out your setup in the solar charging calculator. Never connect a station to your home’s wiring through a wall outlet (backfeeding). Powering home circuits takes a transfer switch or inlet installed by a licensed electrician.

Tips

• Charge the station, phones and power banks before landfall, not when the wind picks up.
• Keep fridge and freezer doors shut. Each opening costs cold the battery has to replace.
• Put the box fan on a timer for the hottest hours of the night rather than all day.
• Store the solar panel somewhere dry and reachable. It is no use behind storm shutters.

Questions

Other uses

• What Size Power Station Do You Need for Camping?
• Can a Power Station Run an RV?
• Using a Power Station as Backup for Medical Devices

Sources

1. eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php
2. cpp.edu/em/documents/power-outage-safety-tips-readygov-pdf.pdf
3. weather.gov/safety/hurricane-after
4. cdc.gov/carbon-monoxide/about/index.html
5. cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5428a2.htm
6. cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5509a4.htm