The number (and kind) of appliances you can operate depends on the battery’s power. 

Determining the required power output. 

Today’s solar batteries often provide 5 kW of continuous power, sufficient to operate a conventional refrigerator, clothes dryer, and electric hob simultaneously. 

However, likely, those aren’t the loads you want to be used in case of a power outage. For instance, the necessary loads you need to perform could use less battery power. 

Once you’ve determined your necessary loads, it’s relatively simple to calculate the amount of electricity your battery will require to discharge. All you need to do is sum up the total wattage demands of all your gadgets. The wattage is often printed in the owner’s handbook or on a sticker on the appliance’s bottom or back. 

Understanding peak power output.

Some appliances require a little additional electricity to start up. These loads typically feature motors, such as refrigerators and sump pumps, and the startup wattage, or amount of electricity required to start them, will be mentioned somewhere on their label. 

The good news is that solar batteries have a peak power rating that lets you know how much power they can deliver in a brief period, often 10 seconds. This has been created expressly to give more power to appliances that require it to switch on. The peak power output for the majority of batteries is approximately 7 kW. 

Running your essential loads and adding the starting wattages of all your appliances that have them to your loads’ overall continuous power consumption will help you determine the peak power output. 

Let’s assume that your refrigerator is the sole appliance with a starter wattage. 4,663 watts of total electricity are already needed. The highest power demand for such a refrigerator would be 5,713 watts, or 5.7 kW if it had a starting wattage of 1,050 watts in addition to the overall power demand (4,663 watts).

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