Use generators, camp stoves and charcoal grills only outdoors, at least 20 feet from windows, and install carbon monoxide detectors with battery backup on every level of your home (Ready.gov). Never plug a generator into a wall outlet to feed the house. Use an inlet and interlock or a transfer switch installed by an electrician.
Step 1: list your critical loads
Find the watts on each device's label, or use the typical values below until you check. Then estimate how many hours a day each one actually runs during an outage.
| Load | Typical watts | Runtime in an outage | Energy per day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Medical device | Check the label | As prescribed | Watts × hours |
| Gas furnace blower | About 450 W | About 12 h in cold weather | About 5.4 kWh |
| Refrigerator | About 150 W running | Compressor on ~40% of the time | About 1.4 kWh |
| Phones, router, lights | About 40 W | About 8 h | About 0.3 kWh |
That example adds up to about 7 kWh a day, and most of it is the furnace blower. Typical values are rough estimates for planning. The plan tool does this math with your own numbers.
Electric heat changes the plan. A heat pump or baseboard heaters draw far more than any portable power station can supply. If that's your heat, plan on one closed-off room, cold-rated sleeping bags and an indoor-rated propane heater used with a working CO alarm, or a whole-home battery sized for the heat pump.
Step 2: protect cold food
Keep the doors shut. A refrigerator keeps food safe for up to 4 hours without power. A full freezer holds a safe temperature for about 48 hours, or 24 hours if it's half full (FoodSafety.gov). Running the fridge from backup power for an hour or two at a time is usually enough to stay ahead of that.
Step 3: pick a setup for your budget
- Phone power banks for each adult
- A headlamp for each person, battery lanterns
- A 1 kWh portable power station for phones, router, lights and short fridge runs
- A 2 to 3.5 kWh power station plus 200 to 400 W of folding solar
- Or an inverter generator with an electrician-installed inlet and interlock
- Covers the furnace blower, fridge cycling and comms for days
- Rooftop solar plus a home battery on a critical-loads panel
- Runs most of the house, and keeps recharging when the sun is out
Solar panels refill a battery much more slowly in winter than in summer. In a long winter outage, folding solar stretches a power station but rarely keeps up with a furnace blower. A generator or a larger battery covers that gap.
What to look for
Portable power station
- Capacity in kWh matched to your daily total, not the marketing name
- Continuous output above your largest load, with surge room for the fridge compressor
- LiFePO4 (LFP) battery chemistry for more charge cycles
- Pass-through charging, so it can run devices while it recharges
Inverter generator
- Running watts above your critical-load total, plus room for compressor starts
- A CO shutoff sensor
- Fuel you can store and rotate safely
Keep it ready
- Charge the power station and power banks once a month.
- Test the generator or power setup each fall, before outage season.
- Test smoke and CO alarms when the clocks change.