Canary Media’s Electrified Life column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals can do to shift their homes and lives to clean electric power.
When the power goes out, a home battery can keep you going.
Energy storage, often paired with rooftop solar, has taken off in the U.S. in recent years as households look for ways to lower their utility bills and stay comfy during grid blackouts. But professionally installed partial- and whole-home battery systems aren’t right for everyone: They’re not only hardwired into a home — a change renters don’t usually have the authority to make — but also pricey. You should expect to pay at least $15,000 for one of these setups.
Luckily, there’s another option: portable batteries that can recharge from a standard home or car outlet or from portable solar panels. Although typically much less powerful than their whole-home counterparts, such DIY systems are far cheaper — and don’t require an electrician to set up. The rapid proliferation of the tech, known as portable power stations or solar generators, is democratizing clean, gas-free backup power more than ever.
These plug-and-play batteries, which range from the size of a toaster to a carry-on suitcase, have ports where you can plug in a few devices and appliances. They retail for several hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending on their storage capacity, and are widely available online and at big-box stores like Best Buy, Costco, and Home Depot. Some products, via their apps, can even shave your electric bill by automatically banking grid electricity during off-peak hours when it’s cheap, so you can pull the stored power during high-demand periods when it’s more expensive.
The market for portable batteries “has seen so much growth,” said Brian Essenmacher, North America head of business development for EcoFlow, which has manufactured this type of equipment since 2017. “They’re clean, they’re safe, there’s no maintenance, and they’re emissions-free. They can really be used by anyone to power the critical devices in the home.”
Portable power stations are mid-sized in the backup-battery bestiary. With a storage capacity of about 500 watt-hours to 4,000 watt-hours, these products are larger than power banks (roughly 7.5 Wh to 75 Wh), which can recharge a phone or a laptop, but typically more diminutive than batteries paired with home solar, like the 13,500-Wh Tesla Powerwall 3. Blurring the lines, though, some power stations can be expanded with additional battery packs to grow into 60,000 Wh or larger behemoths.
The portable tech can power a wide array of devices you might need during an outage. At home, that includes phones, computers, refrigerators, window air conditioners, “micro” heat pumps, TVs, fish-tank aerators, CPAP machines, baby monitors, Wi-Fi routers, sump pumps, and power tools. With some creativity, it can even be used to top off an EV.
The tech also enables outdoor activities, like filming, DJing, movie-projecting, camera-charging, water-boiling, and grilling. In recent years, the systems have pulled off a quiet revolution among the van-life and RV communities, who are increasingly picking batteries over polluting gas generators.
Ellen Vig, a semiretired registered nurse whose home base is in Billerica, Massachusetts, loves to boondock her minivan-turned-camper at the beach. And she’s never without her portable power station to keep her in comfort while she’s off-grid.
“It’s so nice to have a refrigerator and be able to use fans and charge your phone,” said Vig, who goes by “Electric Ellen, The Power Lady!” on YouTube and travels to RV and van-life meetups around the country answering people’s questions about portable backup power. “I’m a glamper, not a camper.”
