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Calculated scenario · sourced manifest

Portable Power for a Winter Storm

1 station passes every configured check; 78 fail at least one.

Energy per day
4,244 Wh
Sourced manifest ↓
Running load
378 W
Sourced manifest ↓
Worst-start surge
378 W
Sourced manifest ↓
Required delivered energy
8,488 Wh
Sourced manifest ↓
Stations passing
1
Sourced manifest ↓
Stations failing
78
Sourced manifest ↓
Edit this plan in the sizing tool →

By the BatteryRank Engineering Team

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
DeviceQuantityHours / dayAverage drawScenario energySource
Furnace blower (1,000 CFM ECM)AC112233 W5,592 WhSource · 2026-07-20
Heated throw blanket (50 × 60 inch)AC18100 W1,600 WhSource · 2026-07-20
Wi-Fi router + modemAC12418 W864 WhSource · 2026-07-06
LED lamp (60W-equivalent bulb)AC389 W432 WhSource · 2026-07-06

02 · Reading the plan

What the numbers for a winter storm leave out

What this situation actually demands

Two lines on this plan are competing answers to the same question. The furnace blower asks 2,796 Wh a day to hold the whole house at temperature; the heated blanket asks 800 Wh to keep one person warm. That ratio, not the catalogue, is what this scenario is actually about — the plan totals 8,488 Wh across two days, and the fastest way to shrink it is a smaller heated volume rather than a bigger station. Deciding how much of the house you intend to keep warm is a larger lever here than any purchase.

Where these plans go wrong

Treating twelve hours of blower as a property of the furnace. It is a property of the house: the blower turns when the burner calls, and twelve hours a day of air movement describes a hard cold snap in a leaky building rather than an average night. A well-sealed house in moderate cold will halve it without anyone deciding anything, and at that point the blower stops being two-thirds of the plan. Nobody can look this up — it has to come from your own thermostat behaviour in ordinary winter weather.

What this plan does not model

Every capacity figure on this site describes a battery at room temperature, and this is the one scenario where that assumption is actively wrong. Lithium cells release less of their rated energy when cold, and most refuse to charge at all below freezing, so a station kept in an unheated garage, a porch, or a car is not the station in the specification. It also assumes you have a way to feed a hardwired appliance, which is an electrician's job and belongs in the budget beside the battery.

03 · Station picks

The one station that covers this plan

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Solar-balanced plan

EcoFlow DELTA Pro Ultra X

Projected runtime
2.5 days
Headroom
23.1%
Weight
135.5 kg

Why it fits

10,000 W sourced solar-input ceiling; 10,000 W usable in this plan

Main compromise

No measured compromise across 1 eligible models

Open sourced model dossier →
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Solar balance

What recharging changes

On EcoFlow DELTA Pro Ultra X, the configured 200 W array harvests 560 Wh/day.

The remaining deficit is 4,433 Wh/day, for about 2.8 days of modeled runtime.

Review the published solar method →

Explore passing models by projected runtime

This ordered data view is separate from the single recommended buying strategy above.

  1. 01EcoFlow DELTA Pro Ultra X2.5 days

Complete kits

    Questions from the same calculation

    How much power do you need for a winter storm?
    8,488 Wh of delivered energy over 2 days, drawing 378 W if every device runs at once. Furnace blower (1,000 CFM ECM) alone is 66% 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?
    Nothing in this manifest has a motor or compressor start above its running draw, so the 378 W continuous figure is the real inverter requirement. That is unusual — most outage plans are gated by a startup spike rather than by running watts.
    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.
    Is it cheaper to heat the house or to heat the people?
    By this manifest's own numbers, heating the people costs a little over a quarter as much: 800 Wh against 2,796 Wh. That is not an argument for skipping the furnace, which protects plumbing as well as comfort, but it does mean a blanket-first plan with the furnace cycling the house periodically fits inside hardware that a furnace-continuous plan does not.
    What does a 200 W panel actually buy in a winter storm?
    About 560 Wh a day, or roughly 13% of the draw — a slowdown, not a recharge. Winter is when a portable array is worth least: the days are short, the sun sits low, and a panel under snow produces nothing at all until somebody clears it. Plan the battery as though the panel were absent and treat whatever it gathers as recovered time.
    Why is there no refrigerator on this plan?
    Because in a sustained winter storm the outdoors is already doing that job. A cooler on an unheated porch holds food at no electrical cost whatsoever, which is why this manifest spends its entire budget on heat. It is the one season where the largest load in every other outage plan on this site simply drops out.