A Portable Power Station for Camping and Outages: How to Size One
The one number that decides which power station you need, and the three that are worth the money for a truck camper or a monsoon-season outage.
Every power station spec sheet lists a dozen numbers. Only one decides what you need: watt-hours (Wh), which is how much energy it holds. Everything you plug in draws watts; multiply by hours and you have your answer.
The arithmetic
- A 12 V camp fridge draws about 40 W on average → 1,000 Wh runs it roughly 24 hours (a bit less; nothing is 100% efficient).
- A CPAP without the humidifier draws 30-60 W → 1,000 Wh is a week of nights.
- A full-size kitchen refrigerator draws 100-200 W on average → 1,000 Wh is 5-8 hours; a monsoon outage wants 2,000 Wh or more.
- Phone, lights, a fan: rounding error.
The three we would buy
For a weekend in the truck with a fridge, the Jackery Explorer 1000 v2 is the middle of the road for a reason: enough capacity, quiet, and the app is optional. If your habit is charging the morning of the trip, the EcoFlow River 3 Plus charges from the wall in about an hour and uses a lithium iron phosphate battery, the chemistry that takes thousands of charges instead of a few hundred. If the real job is keeping the kitchen fridge cold when a storm takes the grid out in August, skip both and get the EcoFlow Delta 2; it is heavy, and it is the one that actually does that job.
What we skip
Anything sold on “peak” watts instead of watt-hours, and anything with an unnamed battery chemistry. Cheap stations with older lithium-ion cells lose capacity in a hot garage in a year; LiFePO4 does not.
The picks
Jackery Explorer 1000 v2
About 1 kWh, quiet, simple, and it runs a 12 V fridge for two nights or a CPAP for a week; the sane middle of the range.
- Best for
- Weekend camping, one appliance, occasional outages.
- Watch out
- The solar input is slow unless you buy their panel; charge it from the wall before you leave.
EcoFlow River 3 Plus
Fast wall charging (near-full in about an hour) and a lithium iron phosphate battery that is rated for thousands of cycles instead of hundreds.
- Best for
- People who forget to charge until the morning of the trip.
- Watch out
- Smaller capacity than the Jackery; it will not run a fridge for a long weekend.
EcoFlow Delta 2
Enough capacity and output to run a full-size refrigerator through a monsoon outage, plus expandable with an extra battery later.
- Best for
- Home backup first, camping second.
- Watch out
- Heavy; it lives in the garage, not the backpack.
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