What Can a Solar Generator Power?

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From rolling blackouts in California to windstorms toppling forests (and power lines) in Washington State; hurricanes devastating communities along the eastern seaboard to electrical grid failures in Texas, the odds are increasing that you will experience a blackout scenario in the near future. Over the last few years, I’ve tested dozens of solar generators. It’s gotten to the point that there’s almost always a solar panel sitting on my deck, charging up a power station. And a question I get a lot from family and friends is, “Are they worth it?” 

That’s a tough one to answer, because it depends a lot on your needs and expectations, where you live, and your personal budget. Here I’ll break down what a solar generator is, what a solar generator can power, how its stored power translates to your individual needs, how much the panels can produce in different conditions, and how this all compares to a gas generator. 

Read Next: The Best Solar Generators

Match the Right Solar Generator to Your Needs

We’ll get into the math behind all of this below, but to start with, here are a few solar generator combinations that I’ve tested and recommend. I’ve matched these to the appropriate use based on your expected weather scenario, as this heavily impacts the number of solar panels you will need.

How a Solar Generator Works

To better understand the potential usefulness of a solar generator, it helps to understand how they work. There are two parts to a solar generator. The first part is a solar panel, which captures the energy of the sun in its raw form. The solar panel transmits this captured energy to the second part of the solar generator, the power station.

The power station serves two functions, to hold the energy captured by the solar panel until you need it, and to control the flow of energy that goes into your electronics. 

Choosing the Right Size Power Station

Power stations are heavy and expensive. Buy a unit that’s larger than you need and you’ll be out hundreds or even thousands of dollars unnecessarily. But buy a unit that’s smaller than what you need and you won’t have enough juice to power your electronics. 

Determining Your Power Needs

Estimating the size power station you need can be tricky, so let’s start with the basics. Let’s say you want to make sure that your living room light stays on for eight hours. Your living room light uses a 60 watt bulb. 

Power stations typically express their power storage potential in kilowatt hours. 

If you want to measure the exact electrical use of a particular appliance, you can purchase a Kill-a-Watt. Here are some very rough estimates to help get you started. Keep in mind that individual appliances vary widely in how much power they use. Yours may be more or less efficient than these numbers. 

Of course, doing this calculation for every single electronic that you might want to power in an outage could be very time-consuming. If you’re interested in powering your entire house, an easier way to determine your kilowatt hour needs would be to look at your electric bill. 

Here’s mine, which shows a range of 12 kilowatt hours to 29 kilowatt hours. The reason for these big spikes is almost certainly to do with specific energy-hungry appliances. In my case, those power spikes likely represent the days I used the clothes washer and dryer. Dishwashers are also pretty power hungry appliances. And if you are planning to power an air conditioner, that is one of the most draining appliances of them all. 

An Additional Need of High Wattage Appliances

There are a few appliances that don’t use power in a linear, consistent manner. The most common one is a refrigerator. Refrigerators fluctuate in power usage throughout the day, as its compressor (what controls the flow of the refrigerant liquid) turns on and off. There will be times of the day when your refrigerator uses very little power. But when the compressor first turns on, it uses a huge amount of power — on the order of 800 watts at a time or more. If you are planning to use your solar generator to power a big-ticket appliance, figure out what its maximum wattage (W) needs are and ensure the unit you ultimately purchase is capable of delivering that amount of power. 

Determining What Size Power Station You Need

When determining the size power station you need: 

• Guesstimate your power needs as best you can.
• Tack on 10 percent if you are only going to use the USB and car charger port; tack on at least 30 percent if you will be using the AC port.
• Take care of your battery, storing it inside and recharging it every three months or so.

Unfortunately, determining your power need is not as simple as estimating 3 kWh and purchasing a power station that can store 3 kWh. That’s because the power station itself is going to use some of its stored energy to power itself. 

Read Next: The Best Portable Power Stations

This won’t affect the power use too much if you’re just using direct current (DC): think USB cables (including USB-C) and car charger ports. If you plan to only use the DC port for power, I would recommend tacking on 10 percent to your projected energy needs. 

If what you’re powering has an AC plug that’s designed to go into a wall outlet, you’re going to see even more energy loss. That’s because the power station needs to convert the direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC) using an inverter. This chews up a surprising amount of power. In my testing, using the AC port reduced the usable watt hours of power stations by as much as 22 percent for high-draw appliances (a large dehumidifier in testing). For low-draw appliances (a grow light in testing), where the AC inverter is on for a lot longer, it reduced the usable watt hours by as much as 50 percent. 

If you plan to use the AC port for power, I would recommend tacking on 30 to 50 percent to your power needs. And be sure to turn the AC port off when it’s not in use, as that energy draw will continue even if nothing is plugged in. 

Other Factors Affecting the Energy in Your Power Station

There are a few other factors affecting the usable power in your power station. The most important of these are the length of time since you last charged your power station, the temperature at which you store your power station, and the amount that your power station has been used.

What Happens to Your Power Station in Storage

All batteries have a chemical reaction going on in them at all times. When your power station is on, this chemical reaction speeds up, but it’s still going on when your battery is technically off, a phenomenon known as self-discharge. The upshot is that power stations will lose power slowly when left in storage for a long period of time. If you use your power station a ton, you won’t notice this effect too much. Even three months in storage will only impact the usable energy in your power station by a couple of percentage points. But if it’s been over a year since you last powered your power station when a power outage hits, you could be in for a rude surprise. If you leave your power station completely drained for too long, it may not turn back on again at all. 

Temperature is another factor that can drain or otherwise damage power stations. When temperatures drop below freezing, the chemical reactions inside the battery slow down, to the point that they can eventually stop altogether and stop working. Conversely, the chemical reaction speeds up in hotter temperatures, resulting in a faster rate of self-discharge. You can reduce the rate of self-discharge by storing your power station in your home, rather than in a garage or other non-climate controlled environment. 

Try to keep your power station stored in a relatively low humidity environment, as excessive moisture can damage the electronics. 

Your Power Station’s Battery Health

Even with perfect care, the batteries in power stations don’t last forever. Over time, the chemical reactions inside the batteries will start to be less robust. But it takes a long, long time. Most portable power stations claim it takes 3,000 to 4,000 cycles before the internal battery will be reduced to 80 percent of what it started out at. 

A side note on this is that most power station companies recommend you store your unit well below 100 percent capacity. If you know you’ll only be using this for one-off adventuring, be sure to take these recommendations into consideration to help preserve battery life. But if you are looking for a power station to have on hand in an emergency, you’re better off taking the hit to the longevity of the power station and powering it up to near 100 percent whenever you recharge. If you’re concerned about the long-term battery health, a reasonable compromise would be to keep it at 80 to 90 percent full charge. 

Choosing the Right Number of Solar Panels 

For short power outages of a day or less you might be happy with nothing more than a power station to keep your small electronics devices going. But if the power outage drags on for multiple days, then the ability to recharge your power station during the day via solar panels is a game changer.

Read Next: The Best Portable Solar Panels

Before we break down how to determine the number and size of solar panels that you need, a note on the limitations of the solar generator setup. With the basic gear provided by solar generator bundle packages, you will not be able to power something indoors, like a refrigerator, while also charging your power station via your solar panels. The cords are just too short. So you have two options: purchase two smaller power stations so that you can charge one while using the other to power your devices. Or you can purchase an extension cable to power one larger power station. Which one is the right option for you depends on what you are willing to spend and how interested you are in lugging power stations back and forth to your home. 

What Size Solar Panel to Choose

Portable solar panels are typically sold in 100W, 200W, and 400W sizes. In my testing, the 200W panel is typically the sweet spot for most people. The 100W panels are just too small to make a big difference in the power station’s capacity. Conversely the 400W panels are so large and cumbersome that they are difficult to set up and move around.

And you should plan to move around your solar panel setup in an emergency situation. A solar panel that is not directly facing the sun produces a lot less energy than one that is. Being able to quickly shift the panels to better angle them toward the sun’s position on the horizon is one of the advantages of a portable solar panel setup. If your solar panels don’t come with built-in sundials (and bizarrely, most of them don’t), then you should absolutely purchase one to clip on. 

How Much Energy Solar Panels Produce

The amount of energy that solar panels produce depends greatly on the time of year and the level of cloud coverage. In my testing, I found that on a bluebird day in summer, a 200-watt solar panel can get awfully close to producing 200 watts of power. On an overcast day in winter, that same panel might only produce 50 watts, maybe less. 

How Many Solar Panels You Need

What this ends up meaning is that the number of solar panels you need depends heavily on what season you expect to experience a power outage in and where in the country you live. If you are dealing with rolling blackouts in the summer months in California, then you will need a lot fewer solar panels than if you are dealing with power lines knocking over in the winter months in Washington State. 

Let’s say you have a 1 kilowatt hour power station that you are only using at night for a CPAP machine that needs 100 watts to run. 

In California in the summer, a single 200-watt might produce as much as 180 watts per hour, assuming you move it around periodically to ensure it’s optimally directed toward the sun. In this scenario the power station would be completely filled in 5.5 hours.

In Washington State in the winter months, we’ll assume you are getting 40 watts out of each 200 watt solar panel. If you only had one panel, it would take 25 hours to fully recharge. You’re going to need at least four 200 watt panels to get 160 watts of power per hour, which will still need over 6 hours to fully recharge. You might get that if there isn’t too much tree coverage where you are.

In this second scenario, you might be better served by getting a larger power station that can last for a longer outage than a supplementary solar panel. 

The Benefits of a Solar Generator Setup Over Traditional Gas Generators

If you are debating the merits of a solar generator versus a traditional gas generator, there are a few other considerations to keep in mind.

Air Pollution

Gas generators produce deadly amounts of carbon monoxide, which is why there are always warnings being put out by health organizations during natural disasters to not run your gas generator inside. But even though you would never do that, these things still stink to high heaven. Keep the windows on the side of your house with the gas generator closed.

Solar generators produce no air pollution.

Noise Pollution

Trust me, if you are running a gas generator continuously during a blackout, you’re going to get the stink eye from your neighbors. Those things are loud enough that all of them come with stated decibels on their spec sheets so you know what you’re getting into. To be honest, all your windows will probably be shut just so you don’t have to listen to it yourself. 

Solar generators are virtually silent.

Recharging

If you are using a gas generator during an extended blackout, odds are that, at some point, you are going to have to go out and get some fuel. That means you are at the mercy of the supply chain operating effectively enough to ensure there is available gas during a blackout. Probably it will be, but the potential for hassle is high.

Solar generators are self-contained units that do not require outside resources. 

A Quick Note on Price

Of all the categories I test, none fluctuate more than portable power stations, portable solar panels, and solar generators. If you can, wait until a shopping holiday, like Amazon Prime Days or Black Friday to make a purchase. These companies are constantly having sales, so if you don’t see a great deal the first time you look, wait a week. 

Final Thoughts

The technology behind solar generators seems to get better every year, with companies developing lighter, less expensive units that are easier to operate than ever. In certain parts of the country, namely those with a lot of usable sunlight, switching to a solar generator setup now is a no-brainer; in other parts of the country, a simple power station may provide more bang for your buck. Either way, it will be exciting to see how this technology continues to improve over time. 

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