How Long Will a Power Station Run a Refrigerator (or Any Appliance)?
A power station's runtime for any appliance equals its usable watt-hour capacity (roughly 85% of the rated capacity, after inverter and battery losses) divided by the appliance's running watts — for a typical full-size refrigerator drawing around 200 running watts, a 1,000Wh power station gives a baseline estimate of about 4 hours of continuous runtime, though a real refrigerator often runs meaningfully longer than that in practice.
This is one of the single most common questions people search before buying a power station, and the math behind it is simpler than it looks once broken into its two parts.
The core formula
Usable capacity (rated Wh × about 85% efficiency) divided by the appliance's running watts gives hours of runtime. A 1,000Wh power station has roughly 850Wh usable; divided by 200 running watts, that's 4.25 hours of continuous draw — the same calculation this calculator automates for any capacity and any appliance.
Why refrigerators are the most-asked-about appliance
A refrigerator is the appliance people most want to keep running during an outage, since food spoilage starts within hours (covered in the food-safety guide for the Appliance Wattage Database), which is exactly why "how long will a power station run a fridge" is such a heavily searched question across every power station brand's own site.