- How much power do you need for a three-day outage?
- 8,856 Wh of delivered energy over 3 days, drawing 334 W if every device runs at once. Refrigerator (full-size) alone is 51% 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?
- Refrigerator (full-size). Its sourced 1,200 W startup demand, arriving while the other devices keep running, sets a worst-case moment of 1,354 W — well above the 334 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.
- Do I really need three days of stored energy?
- Almost certainly not, and planning that way is what makes this scenario unaffordable. The 8,856 Wh figure assumes both compressors and the router run untouched for the full 72 hours. In practice people run cold appliances in blocks and watch a thermometer instead of a clock, which is a rationing decision rather than a purchase decision — and it moves the requirement far more than any station in the catalogue does.
- Why does adding solar change this more than adding capacity?
- Because capacity is spent once and an array is spent daily. A station that covers one day of this manifest and recharges each morning covers three days; a station holding three days of energy with no way to refill covers exactly three days and then stops. At the 2,952 Wh daily figure, an array that closes even half the gap turns a fixed deadline into an open-ended one.
- What can I cut from this plan, and what has to stay?
- The four LED lamps are 288 Wh a day between them — under 10% of the plan, and the cheapest comfort you can keep. The router is 432 Wh, and unlike the lamps it buys nothing while you sleep, so a timer on it is the single easiest saving here. The refrigerator and the freezer are the plan; everything else is noise around them.