Hurricane Season Power Checklist: Buy Before the Grid Goes Down

Why This List Exists

Power station inventory behaves like plywood: it vanishes when the cone appears. Shipping windows close, prices spike on third-party sellers, and the 0–80% fast-charge spec you ignored in June becomes the most important number you own in September. This checklist sequences the decisions — what to buy, when to charge, what to power first — so the work happens before the grid goes down, not during.

Everything below is sized with our standard model: usable energy = rated Wh × 0.85, runtime = usable Wh ÷ (appliance watts × duty cycle). Run your own numbers in the runtime calculator.

The Prep Timeline

Start of season (June 1): buy and verify

• Buy the battery now. Order fulfillment, not panic pricing, is the real reason. If you're starting from zero, the two-unit pattern below covers most households.
• Run the surge audit. List every appliance you'd power, with running and surge watts. Refrigerator: 150W run / 1,200W surge. Chest freezer: 100W / 900W. Sump pump (1/3 HP): 800W / 1,800W. Your station's surge rating must clear the largest spike on the list — this gate, not capacity, is what disqualifies small units. Details per appliance on our can-it-run pages.
• Test the actual loads. Plug the fridge into the station and confirm the compressor starts from battery. A surge failure discovered in June is a return; in September it's a spoiled freezer.
• Buy the cables now. CPAP DC cable, 12V car-charging cable, any solar panel adapters. These are the items that are genuinely unavailable during a named storm.

Watch issued (72 hours out): charge everything

• Top off every battery to 100% — stations, phones, laptops, USB packs. LFP stations hold charge for months, but verify; a unit that's been lending power all summer may be at 40%.
• Set passthrough mode. Fridge plugs into the station, station plugs into the wall. The battery stays full and the switchover is automatic whenever the grid drops — including at 3 AM, including when you're not home.
• Freeze water. Fill empty freezer space with water containers. Thermal mass extends both the food-safety window and the compressor's off-time, cutting duty cycle and stretching battery runtime.
• Chill everything to max. Drop the fridge and freezer to their coldest settings. You're banking cold while electricity is free.

Warning issued (24 hours out): final positioning

• Fuel the car. A full tank is a multi-kWh generator-of-last-resort via the 12V port — slow (overnight for a 1kWh station), but it works in the rain.
• Stage stations where the loads are. Fridge unit in the kitchen, CPAP unit at the bedside, sump unit on a basement shelf — not the floor.
• Print the load priority list (below) and tape it to the biggest station. Decision quality at hour 30 of an outage is poor; decide now.

During the outage: spend watt-hours like money

• Run the priority list, top down. Power the top tier continuously; duty-cycle the middle; refuse the bottom.
• Don't open the fridge. Every door event raises compressor duty cycle, and duty cycle is the denominator of your runtime.
• Exploit every recharge window. Grid flickers, a neighbor's generator hour, a drive for supplies — fast-charging stations convert short windows into full nights. This is where a 40-minute 0–80% spec beats a 102-minute one.

After: reset

• Recharge everything to 100%, log what ran out first, and resize next season's setup accordingly. The load you triaged away is next year's capacity target.

The Load Priority List

When watt-hours are finite, rank ruthlessly. Loads from our appliance model:

Priority	Load	Watts (avg)	Daily energy	Rule
1	Medical (CPAP, no humidifier)	40W × 8h	320Wh	Runs every night, no debate
2	Refrigerator	52.5W avg (35% duty)	~1.26kWh	Continuous; door stays shut
3	Chest freezer	30W avg (30% duty)	~0.72kWh	Burst-power it; holds 24–48h closed (see deep freezer page)
4	Router + modem	15W	360Wh	Continuous if working/comms matter
5	Phones, laptops, lights	~10–60W	~300Wh	Charge during fridge compressor-off windows
6	Fans	30–75W	varies	Nighttime only
—	Space heater, kettle, AC	1,500W+	1.5kWh per hour	Refuse. One hour of heater = a full day of fridge

That last row is the discipline test. A 1,500W space heater consumes a 1kWh station in about 35 minutes. Nothing with a heating element runs on battery during an outage.

What to Buy: Three Budget Tiers

The two-unit standard (~$1,000–1,800): a 1kWh-class workhorse plus a small bedside unit. The EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus (1,024Wh, 1,800W/3,600W, 0–80% in 40 min, WattScore 91) covers fridge duty — modeled 16.6 hours per charge — and clears every residential surge including a sump pump. The Anker SOLIX C1000 (1,056Wh, 2,400W surge, WattScore 87) is the same mission for less money if sump duty isn't on your list. Pair either with a Bluetti EB3A (268Wh, $300 class) for CPAP/phones/router at the bedside, so nobody unplugs the refrigerator to charge a phone.

The multi-day tier ($1,500+): the Jackery Explorer 2000 Plus (2,042Wh, 3,000W/6,000W, WattScore 89) doubles fridge runtime to 33 hours and accepts 1,400W of solar — the best panel ceiling in its class for storm-season recharging.

The whole-event tier: the EcoFlow DELTA Pro 3 (4,096Wh, 4,000W/8,000W, WattScore 92) models 66 hours of fridge runtime and recharges 0–80% in 80 minutes from a generator or grid window, or from up to 2,600W of solar. One box, every load on the priority list, multi-day endurance.

Full ranked database: /stations.

Charging Strategy: The Part Most Checklists Skip

A hurricane outage is rarely a clean 48 hours of nothing — it's flickers, partial restorations, and neighbors with generators. Your plan should treat recharge speed as a primary spec:

1. Wall power, any time it exists. The DELTA 3 Plus banks ~820Wh in 40 minutes; even ten-minute flickers add fridge-hours.
2. Vehicle 12V while driving. Supply runs and damage tours double as charging sessions. Slow (≈100–200Wh per driving hour), but free.
3. Solar, managed honestly. Post-storm skies are often clear; mid-storm they are not. Panels are your multi-day extension, not your day-one plan. Size panel watts to at least half your daily fridge budget (~600W+ of panel for ~1.26kWh/day in 4–5 derated sun-hours).
4. Generator bursts if you have one. Run it 1–2 hours at midday to recharge batteries near its efficient load point, then enjoy silence all night. Batteries are the muffler.

FAQ

How big a power station do I need for hurricane season?

Budget loads first: a refrigerator runs ~1.26kWh/day, a chest freezer ~0.72kWh/day, network ~0.36kWh/day, a CPAP 0.32kWh/night. For a 2-day outage, that's roughly 5kWh delivered — a 2kWh station plus solar/vehicle recharging, or a 4kWh unit straight up. For fridge-only, single-night outages, the 1kWh class is the floor.

Should I keep my power station plugged in all season?

For LFP-chemistry stations (every unit we recommend), passthrough/UPS mode with the fridge connected is the strongest configuration: the battery stays topped, and switchover is automatic when the grid fails. Check your manual's guidance on long-term passthrough use; some makers recommend an occasional discharge cycle.

Can I run a window AC during a hurricane outage?

Mostly no. Window units draw 500–1,500W with compressor surges that eat batteries — even a 4kWh DELTA Pro 3 runs a mid-size unit only a few hours. Cooling is what the priority list sacrifices; see the window AC can-it-run page before planning otherwise.

What's the single most common hurricane power-prep mistake?

Buying capacity without checking surge. A station that can't deliver your refrigerator's ~1,200W startup spike is a phone charger no matter how many watt-hours it holds — and the discovery usually happens after landfall.