Start here: three questions, then the right gear
Answer three quick questions and we point you at the right gear. A power station is a big rechargeable battery with outlets: it runs your important things when the grid fails, silently and indoors. A fuel generator makes its own power from gasoline or propane. Everything below is choosing between those two and sizing the one you pick.
Step 1 of 3
What has to keep running?
Fridge, lights, and phones
The essentials list. This fits most apartments, most renters, and short outages anywhere.
See the portable picksA sump pump or well pump
Pumps hit hard for a split second when they start. That spike, called surge, decides whether a station works at all.
Read the sump pump guideFurnace, or the whole house
Heat, water, and the circuits in your panel. This is panel level backup, and it is a bigger class of gear.
How whole-home backup worksNot sure yet
Start with your own list of things to run. See the hours first, shop second.
Run the runtime calculatorStep 2 of 3
Battery or fuel?
Battery (electric)
Quiet and safe to run indoors. Solar panels or a wall outlet refill it. The trade: you pay more for each hour of runtime, and an empty battery needs sun or grid power to come back.
See cost per usable watt hourOr compare the three big stations head to headGas or propane
Runs for days on a tank and costs less per hour. The trade: it lives outside, it makes noise, and it needs fuel stored and rotated.
See propane and dual fuel generatorsOr read the gas picks in the whole-home roundupStep 3 of 3
See how long it runs
Type in the things you own and the calculator gives you hours for any battery, including whether a pump start will trip it. Two minutes here prevents the most common buying mistake in this category.
The five words, when you want them
- Watt: how fast power is being used right now.
- Watt hour: an amount of energy. Batteries are sized in these.
- Usable capacity: about 85 percent of the printed battery size, after conversion losses.
- Duty cycle: the share of the hour an appliance actually runs. A fridge averages about 40 percent.
- Surge: the brief spike a motor draws when it starts. It decides whether pumps work at all.
The one safety warning. Never backfeed a house panel through an outlet or a homemade cord. It can kill a utility worker and it is illegal in most places. The safe ways in are plain extension cords or a transfer switch, which is a wired switch that feeds chosen circuits safely. The two options, compared.