Home & Garden

How to Use the "What Size Power Station Do I Need" Calculator

List each device you want to power along with its wattage and daily hours of use, set how many days of backup you want, and the calculator totals your energy needs and recommends a capacity rounded up to the nearest common commercial tier.

The tool is built around a realistic device list rather than a generic estimate, so the accuracy of the recommendation depends on how complete and honest that list is.

Deciding what belongs on your list

As covered in the essentials-only guide, most people get the most useful recommendation by listing only what they'd genuinely want running during a real outage, rather than every appliance they own.

Choosing days of backup based on your real risk

As covered in the frequent-vs-rare-outage guide, set the days slider based on your area's realistic outage pattern rather than an arbitrary worst case, unless you specifically want to plan for a rare, extended event.

Frequently asked questions

Does the recommendation include a safety margin?

Yes — it applies a typical 85% usable-efficiency factor and rounds up to the nearest common commercial capacity tier, which already builds in some headroom beyond the bare minimum calculated need.

What if my recommended capacity is larger than any single power station on the market?

Some people split a very large calculated need across two smaller units, or reconsider their device list against the essentials-only guide to see if the total can reasonably be trimmed down first.