What should you know before buying a power station?

Which question do you have?

Which guide should you read first?

Read how to size a power station first, unless you already know your appliances' watts and how many hours you need them. Every other guide assumes you can tell running watts, start-up surge and watt-hours apart, and the sizing guide is where those three numbers get explained together.

If you already have a list of loads and a rough battery size, skip ahead to the path below that matches your situation. Each guide answers one question. They don't repeat each other, so you won't lose anything by reading only the ones that apply to you.

A good rule: read one guide, then go and use the data. The guides explain how to think about a choice. The model pages, appliance checks and calculators give you the answer for your loads. Switching between the two is faster than reading every guide front to back.

What should you read if you're preparing for power outages?

Start with power station vs generator for an outage, because that decides whether a battery is the right tool at all. Long outages are common enough to plan for. In one federal household survey, roughly one US household in six had an outage that lasted more than a day. (2020 RECS Table HC2.1 Structural and geographic characteristics of U.S. homes, by housing unit type, 2020, U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2023)

Once you've settled on a battery, the reading order depends on what you want to keep running.

• A fridge, freezer or pump. Read the guide to surge vs running watts next. A motor load can fail on start-up even when the battery is big enough to run it for hours.
• Furnace blowers, well pumps or whole circuits. Read connecting a power station to your house safely. It explains the options, and it's clear that panel wiring is a job for a licensed electrician with local permits.
• Several days without power. Read the solar charging guide, because recharging during the day is what stretches a battery past its first charge.

If the outages where you live are usually brief, you may not need the whole path. Most of the time Americans spend without power comes from a few major events, such as hurricanes, while ordinary outages add up to only a couple of hours a year. (Hurricanes in 2024 led to the most hours without power in the United States in 10 years, U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2025) Plan around the rare long outage you're worried about, and read the guides that serve that plan.

After that, the best power station lists narrow the field. The home backup and outage fridge lists use requirements built for this situation.

What should you read if you need to keep a computer or home office running?

Read UPS vs EPS: how fast a power station switches over. Whether a desktop, router or network drive stays on through a power cut depends on switchover time more than on battery size, so that is the spec to check first.

Then read the sizing guide if you haven't, to work out how long the setup has to last. If your home office draws little power, even a small station can bridge a long outage. The catch is the moment the power fails. The switchover guide covers that, and the sizing guide covers the hours after.

What should you read if you plan to charge from solar?

Read solar charging a power station: what limits the speed first. Panel wattage, the station's input limit, the weather and the season all cap how fast you refill, and the guide explains which one is holding you back.

If you'll charge and drain the battery every day, as on a long trip or an off-grid cabin, read LiFePO4 vs NMC vs sodium-ion next. Battery chemistry matters most when the station cycles daily for years. Of the 56 current models, 54 use LiFePO4, so that guide is more about understanding the trade-off than hunting for a rare battery type.

When you have your panel watts and expected sun hours, the solar recharge calculator turns them into hours to refill for each model.

What should you read before running motors, pumps or air conditioners?

Read surge watts vs running watts. Fridges, freezers, well pumps, sump pumps, air conditioners and power tools need a short burst of power to start, and that burst is the reason a station can fail with plenty of battery left.

The guide explains the burst. The appliance checks apply it. Once you understand surge, open the check for your appliance to see which of the 56 models can start it and how long each one runs it. If your appliance runs on 240 V, read the transfer switch guide too, because a single 120 V outlet won't cover it.

What should you read if you're comparing brands or battery types?

Read EcoFlow vs Jackery if those two brands are your shortlist, and the battery chemistry guide if your choice comes down to LiFePO4 against an older chemistry. The site covers 6 brands: Anker SOLIX (9), BLUETTI (9), DJI Power (4), EcoFlow (14), Goal Zero (6) and Jackery (14).

The brand guide compares lineups using published specs only. It doesn't rate customer service, apps or warranty claims, because the spec data doesn't include them. For brands other than those two, the brands page and the head-to-head comparisons do the same job from the same data.

What should you read for camping, RV and van trips?

Start with the sizing guide, then the solar charging guide. On the road, the questions are how much you use in a day and how much your panels can put back in a day. The two guides answer those in that order.

Weight matters more on a trip than at home, so read the chemistry guide with weight in mind. Battery types differ in how much energy they pack per pound as well as in how long they last. If you'll run a 12 V compressor fridge, the surge guide is less urgent, because those fridges draw little. A full-size fridge or a rooftop air conditioner changes that.

To test a full day of loads against every model, use the power station runtime calculator. It checks both running and start-up watts and uses the site's 85% inverter efficiency assumption.

How were these guides written?

The guides are built from the same verified spec database as the rest of the site. Numbers about models, such as how many have a feature or how they compare, are computed from that data when the site is built. Outside statistics come from a set of 79 facts checked against their source documents, and each one is cited where it appears.

The prose was drafted with AI assistance under written rules. Those rules require every number to come from the data or a cited source, ban any claim of hands-on testing, and require cautious safety advice. We compared published specifications and suitability criteria. We didn't run the units ourselves. The how we research page sets out the full method, including how errors get corrected.

What won't these guides tell you?

They won't tell you how a unit feels to use, how loud its fans are or how it holds up after years, because none of that is in published specs. They also won't give you wiring steps for a home panel or advice that replaces a medical device maker's guidance.

For panel connections, use a licensed electrician and follow local permit rules. For a CPAP, oxygen concentrator or other medical device, ask its maker how to back it up and keep a margin above any runtime on this site. Everything else in the guides is meant to get you to a short list you can check against your own appliance labels.