TVs, ACs, and Fridges: What Can a Portable Power Station Run?
Sometimes you want to get away from everything and unplug from the world.
Fortunately, spending time off-grid doesn’t have to mean living a spartan lifestyle. If you have a portable power station, you can operate many devices off-grid, including major household appliances. The type of appliances your PPS can run depends on its output and storage capacity, and the wattage of devices you want to operate simultaneously.
How Do I Know If My Portable Power Station Can Run an Appliance?
To find out what devices you can use, you need to know both the maximum power output and capacity of your portable power station. In addition, you need to know the power requirements for whatever appliances you want to use.
Your portable power station’s capacity is measured in watt-hours (Wh) or kilowatt-hours (kWh). This number indicates the maximum number of watts the PPS can output. When you divide the PPS capacity by the wattage requirement of an appliance or device, you can learn how long you can run that appliance or device and if the PPS provides sufficient electricity for it to operate.
Your PPS capacity should have extra wattage to accommodate the appliance’s startup current or surge power. The running capacity of a machine like an air conditioner is almost always lower than the surge capacity needed to turn it on.
EcoFlow’s portable power stations offer an X-Boost feature that helps provide additional output to get appliances up and running.
The total time you can run a device or appliance also depends on how many items you operate simultaneously without recharging. If you are spending time off-grid, you may want to rotate devices rather than powering everything at once.
Understanding the math will help you prepare for purchasing the amount of portable power you need to meet your off-grid requirement.
Here are some examples of what portable power stations can—and can’t—do:
Can a Portable Power Station Power a TV?
Most portable power stations can run a television with little difficulty. A TV uses a relatively low hourly wattage. Most modern TVs use an average of 100 watts per hour, ranging from 50 to 200 watts per hour.
A 100-watt demand isn’t too high. A more powerful PPS—such as one of the DELTA series—is ideal if you want to watch the television for longer than 7 hours and need to simultaneously power multiple devices.
The runtime will change if you need to run other devices simultaneously with the TV. For example, if you want to stream online content or run a Blu-ray player at the same time as your television, you need to consider the wattage requirements of any connected devices. Any time you charge multiple devices or appliances, it will affect the total power you use and how long your generator will deliver on your needs between charges.
The power consumption of even a big-screen TV is relatively small. You should be able to enjoy television for as much of the day as you want if you connect it to a high-capacity portable power station. There is little reason you should feel compelled to abandon television in your off-grid time (unless you want to!)
Can a Portable Power Station Power Your AC Unit?
A smaller PPS typically won’t work for an air conditioning unit. However, some larger units, like the DELTA Pro, will do the job.
Air conditioning units vary in wattage, but all require a substantial amount of power. A central air conditioning unit typically consumes between 3000 and 3500 watts per hour. Larger portable units use between 2,900 and 4,100 watts per hour, while window units use between 900 and 1,400 watts per hour.
If you want to run a motorhome air conditioning system, you may need as much as 3,600 watts to get the unit running and between 500-1,800 watts per hour to run it. For smaller portable power stations, this is likely too much. A station designed to power small appliances or personal electronic devices will not be able to keep up with your air conditioning needs, even if it does deliver enough power to get your AC unit started in the first place.
A more powerful unit like the DELTA Pro, on the other hand, with an expandable power capacity available up to 25 kWh, can power the average air conditioner for ten hours out of the box.