Why Your Power Station Shut Off the Instant You Plugged In the Fridge
This is almost always a surge-watts problem, not a capacity problem — the refrigerator's compressor pulled its brief startup spike (often 2-3× its running watts) beyond the power station's surge or peak output rating, tripping its overload protection instantly, even though the unit's watt-hour capacity and continuous wattage rating were more than sufficient to run the fridge once it was actually going.
This is one of the most common, and most confusing, real-world frustrations people run into with a new power station, precisely because it happens instantly rather than gradually.
Why it happens the moment you plug in, not gradually
Overload protection is designed to react within a fraction of a second to protect the internal electronics from a genuine overcurrent event — a startup surge exceeding the surge rating triggers that protection immediately, which is why the shutdown feels sudden and total rather than a gradual power-down.
What to check and do next
As covered in the running-vs-surge guide, compare your specific refrigerator's surge watts against your power station's surge/peak rating — if the surge rating is genuinely insufficient, a higher-surge-rated unit is needed for that specific appliance, since this isn't something you can work around through settings alone.