Calculated scenario · sourced manifest

Portable Power for Hurricane Season

No sourced station passes every configured check; 79 fail at least one.

Energy per day: 5,152 Wh
Running load: 999 W
Worst-start surge: 2,199 W
Required delivered energy: 15,456 Wh
Stations passing: 0
Stations failing: 79

01 · Load manifest

Every load in the calculation

Average draw applies each sourced duty cycle; energy is average draw × quantity × daily hours × scenario days.

Sourced device loads and calculated energy
Device	Quantity	Hours / day	Average draw	Scenario energy	Source
Refrigerator (full-size)AC	1	24	63 W	4,536 Wh	Source · 2026-07-06
Sump pump (1/3 HP)AC	1	4	800 W	9,600 Wh	Source · 2026-07-06
Wi-Fi router + modemAC	1	24	18 W	1,296 Wh	Source · 2026-07-06
Emergency weather radioAC	1	8	1 W	24 Wh	Source · 2026-07-20

02 · Reading the plan

What the numbers for hurricane season leave out

What this situation actually demands

Nothing in the catalogue passes this plan, and the reason deserves stating plainly rather than leaving as a failure count. At four hours of pumping a day the sump pump alone draws 3,200 Wh — more than the 1,952 Wh everything else on the manifest asks for put together. Three days of that is 15,456 Wh delivered, roughly 3,168 Wh beyond what the largest single unit we track holds at 12,288 Wh when completely full, before any conversion loss at all. At the modelled rate this situation has no one-box answer: it has a rationing answer, a second-unit answer, or a smaller assumption about the rain.

Where these plans go wrong

Carrying single-night intuition into a 72-hour storm. Over one night a sump pump is a surge problem — the motor start is what rules stations out, and the energy barely registers. Stretch the same pump across three days and the constraint inverts completely: the sourced 2,000 W start is the stiffest instant on this plan and most of the catalogue clears it, so every failure here is energy. Buy on surge headroom alone and you get a station that starts the pump beautifully and is flat by the first morning.

What this plan does not model

Four hours a day is an assumption about how much water arrives, not a reading from your basin, and it decides roughly two-thirds of this answer on its own. Halve it and the plan fits inside hardware people actually buy; double it and nothing does. The pump behind the figure is a one-third-horsepower unit, so a half-horse or a tired older motor moves the whole plan again. And "hurricane season" is a calendar, not a forecast — three days is a planning choice we made, not a duration anyone can promise you.

03 · Station picks

Zero ways to cover the plan

Some links on this page are affiliate links. BatteryRank may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Commission never affects whether a station passes these checks; when two stations tie on every measured criterion, the one with a live retail offer is shown.

Solar balance

What recharging changes

The default plan does not assume solar recharging. Add a panel size in the editable calculator to see daily harvest and deficit by station.

Review the published solar method →

Device decisions

Data rankings

Best for Home Backup →

Complete kits

Questions from the same calculation

How much power do you need for hurricane season?: 15,456 Wh of delivered energy over 3 days, drawing 999 W if every device runs at once. Sump pump (1/3 HP) alone is 62% of that energy, so it is the load worth measuring first — the rest of the manifest barely moves the answer.
What decides whether a station can start this setup?: Sump pump (1/3 HP). Its sourced 2,000 W startup demand, arriving while the other devices keep running, sets a worst-case moment of 2,199 W — well above the 999 W running total. A station sized only to the running figure will carry this plan right up until that device restarts.
Why is every load on this plan running through the inverter?: None of the devices in this manifest has a manufacturer-supported DC input, so each one pays the DC-to-AC conversion cost. Where a device does offer a native 12 V cord — camping fridges especially — using it is the cheapest runtime you can buy.
Could two power stations cover this when one cannot?: In principle yes, and it is the honest answer to a 15,456 Wh requirement: put the pump on one unit and the refrigerator, router, and radio on another, and each side becomes an ordinary sizing problem. What BatteryRank will not do is rank that plan for you. Every score, fit check, and pick on this site describes one station running one manifest, so a split-load setup is outside what our data can evaluate.
What is the single number to nail down before buying anything?: How many hours your pump actually runs in heavy rain. It is the input this plan is most sensitive to and the one we are guessing at, and unlike wattage it is specific to your lot, your water table, and the storm. An hour meter or a run-time counter on the pump circuit answers it for the price of a few dollars, and the answer is worth more than any comparison on this site.
Does the emergency radio need to be in the power budget at all?: No. At 8 Wh a day it is 24 Wh across the whole outage — under half a percent of a single day of this plan, and less than the refrigerator spends in ten minutes. It earns its place on a hurricane list for reasons that have nothing to do with electricity, and it is the one item here you can stop calculating.