It’s to figure out what actually matters.
We have battery power stations, a generator, and solar. But none of those gives us unlimited electricity. Especially if an outage lasts more than a few hours, every watt starts competing with something else.
So the question I’ve been thinking about is pretty simple:
What should I actually spend our backup power on?
For my family, the answer starts with food, communication, and lighting.
And after doing some actual testing, I have a much better idea of what that might look like.
My First Priority Would Be the Refrigerator
We have two large refrigeration appliances.
There’s a refrigerator/freezer in the house and a full-size standing freezer in the garage.
The garage freezer has one big advantage during an outage: if we leave it closed, there’s really no reason to keep opening it during the first several hours.
The refrigerator is different.
That’s where the milk is.
Leftovers.
Condiments.
Drinks.
Fresh food.
And because people are going in and out of it, it starts warming much faster.
So during the beginning of an outage, my plan would be to connect our Anker SOLIX C1000 to the house refrigerator/freezer.
Our smaller EcoFlow RIVER 2 could then stay available for phones, a lamp at night, or other small loads.
I also have a Voltaic V72, which gives us another option for keeping phones and tablets charged.
The idea isn’t to connect everything we own.
It’s to give different jobs to the power we have.
But I Realized I Had Never Actually Tested My Plan
Here was the problem.
I was mentally planning around the idea that the Anker could probably keep our refrigerator running for around 12 hours.
I didn’t have a particularly good reason for that number.
It just seemed reasonable.
And the more I thought about writing this article, the more I realized that I was building an emergency plan around an assumption I had never tested.
So I decided to test it.
I charged the Anker SOLIX C1000 and connected our refrigerator/freezer to it for four hours.
I didn’t turn the test into a laboratory experiment.
We used the refrigerator normally.
The refrigerator door was opened and closed several times during the four hours, and the freezer was opened once.
In other words, I wanted to know what might actually happen at our house during an outage.
Four Hours Used 42% of the Battery
The Anker started the refrigerator test at 99%.
Four hours later, it was at 57%.
So during that four-hour period, our refrigerator/freezer consumed about 42 percent of the battery.
At one point while the compressor was running, I saw the power station showing about 129 watts of output.
But that number by itself doesn’t tell us very much.
Refrigerators cycle.
The compressor turns on, runs for a while, shuts off, and eventually starts again. How often that happens depends on temperature, how frequently the doors are opened, how much food is inside, and plenty of other variables.
The battery percentage over several hours told me much more.
If that four-hour period were representative of a longer outage, it suggests that my original idea of getting around 12 hours from the C1000 was probably optimistic.
Something closer to nine or ten hours may be more realistic for our refrigerator under similar conditions.
I wouldn’t treat that as a guaranteed runtime.
But it’s a much better planning number than the one I made up in my head.
Then I Tested the Garage Freezer
After recharging the Anker, I did the same four-hour test with our full-size standing freezer.
This time I started at 100%.
Four hours later, the Anker was at 63%.
That means the freezer used about 37 percent of the battery during the test.
Interestingly, I saw the freezer pulling around 312 watts at one point and only about 72 watts at another.
Again, that’s why I don’t think looking at one instantaneous wattage number tells you the whole story.
Over the full four hours, the freezer actually used slightly less battery than the refrigerator/freezer.
Here were my results:
Appliance | Start | After 4 Hours | Battery Used |
|---|---|---|---|
House refrigerator/freezer | 99% | 57% | 42% |
Garage standing freezer | 100% | 63% | 37% |
The difference isn’t enormous.
But it was enough to teach me something.
Measure Over Time, Not for Ten Seconds
If I had looked at the freezer while it was pulling more than 300 watts and the refrigerator while it was pulling around 129 watts, I might have immediately assumed the freezer was the bigger energy hog.
Over four hours, that wasn’t what happened.
That doesn’t mean the freezer will always use less energy.
Ambient temperature changes.
Compressors cycle differently.
People open doors.
Appliances have different loads inside them.
But if I ever have to choose which one is worth powering during a long outage, I now have some actual information to work with.
And that’s a lot better than guessing.
The test also reinforced something else.
During an outage, I don’t need to immediately provide power to everything that normally uses electricity.
The standing freezer, for example, can stay closed for a while. There’s no reason to spend limited battery capacity solving a problem that doesn’t exist yet.
Sometimes conserving power means not powering something at all.
What I Would Not Power
There are plenty of things in our house that technically could run from backup power.
That doesn’t mean I would run them.
Our microwave is an over-the-range unit, uses a lot of power, and isn’t particularly convenient to connect to backup power anyway.
So it’s out.
Electric cooking?
Also out.
We already have a Gas One butane stove and a Snow Peak GigaPower backpacking stove. Used appropriately and according to their safety instructions, those give us ways to cook without spending a large amount of stored electrical energy creating heat.
Coffee is covered too.
I use an AeroPress, so as long as I can heat water, I don’t need an electric coffee maker.
Televisions wouldn’t be a priority either.
If the power is out, there’s a good chance we don’t have normal internet or cable anyway.
Desktop computers and modern gaming systems fall into roughly the same category.
With the exception of refrigeration, most large appliances and high-draw electrical devices would simply stay off.
That Doesn’t Mean Comfort Never Matters
I also don’t think an emergency plan has to be completely joyless.
If an outage lasted several days, entertainment would eventually matter—especially with kids.
We have older systems like an NES and SNES.
Those might eventually earn some battery time.
Not because playing Mario is an emergency necessity, but because morale matters too.
The important part is that it probably wouldn’t be a first-day priority.
That’s another thing I’m realizing about emergency power.
Priorities change.
What matters at hour three may be very different from what matters on day three.
Then the Generator Comes Into the Picture
If the outage continued and the Anker started getting low, I’d probably move to the generator.
The goal wouldn’t necessarily be to run the generator continuously.
I’d rather use it strategically.
Recharge the Anker.
Run the refrigerator while the generator is operating.
Bring the garage freezer temperature back down.
Charge whatever other batteries need charging.
Then shut the generator off again.
That lets stored fuel do multiple jobs during the same runtime.
Gasoline is another finite resource.
If the outage lasts long enough, every gallon becomes something else I have to ration.
Solar Is More Valuable to Me Later
I also have a Renogy 200-watt folding solar panel.
But interestingly, I don’t think I would immediately pull it out during a short outage.
That’s not really the role I have in mind for it.
For me, solar becomes more important when the outage starts turning from an inconvenience into a long-duration problem.
If we’re several days in and gasoline is getting difficult to find, the strategy changes.
Eventually, keeping a refrigerator and a full-size freezer running may simply stop being a good use of the energy we can produce.
At that point, solar gives us something extremely valuable:
Renewable access to a smaller amount of electricity.
Maybe I can’t keep two large appliances cold indefinitely.
But I can still charge battery banks during the day.
I can keep phones working.
I can charge tablets.
I can run lights at night.
I can keep smaller electronics available.
That’s a completely different kind of resilience.
Eventually, You Have to Triage the Food Too
If an outage lasted long enough that powering both refrigeration appliances stopped making sense, I’d have another decision to make.
Which one gives me the most value for the energy it consumes?
Now that I’ve tested them, I have at least a rough baseline.
I’d consolidate what I could into the lower-power option.
Food that couldn’t be moved would become the next thing we ate.
Anything we couldn’t preserve or safely consume would eventually have to be thrown away.
Then we would work through whatever remained in the last refrigerator or freezer while we could still keep it cold.
Eventually, there could be a point where even that stops making sense.
That sounds wasteful—and I’d hate doing it.
But using the last of your fuel or battery capacity trying to save frozen food may not make sense if that electricity has become your only way to keep phones, lights, and communication equipment working.
At some point, the mission changes.
You Can’t Always Solve the Problem by Buying More Batteries
I can already imagine one response to all of this:
Buy another power station.
Buy a bigger battery.
Add more solar panels.
Build a larger backup system.
And sure, more capacity would make things easier.
But batteries and solar panels cost money.
Not every family can spend thousands of dollars building a system capable of running their entire house.
And I don’t think preparedness should require that.
Part of being prepared is learning how to make better decisions with what you already have.
For us, that means accepting that backup electricity is limited and deciding what deserves it.
My Priorities Change as the Outage Gets Longer
The more I think about this, the more my power strategy looks like stages.
At the beginning, the goal is mostly preservation and convenience.
Keep the refrigerator cold.
Keep the phones charged.
Keep some lights available.
If the outage continues, the focus shifts toward conservation.
Use the generator strategically.
Limit high-draw devices.
Protect the freezer.
Recharge batteries while fuel is available.
If things stretch into a much longer event, the priority becomes sustainability.
Preserve fuel.
Use solar where possible.
Consolidate food.
Give up loads that require too much energy.
Protect the smaller electrical capabilities that can realistically be maintained.
That’s very different from trying to live normally while the grid is down.
And I think that’s probably the point.
A Simple Challenge for This Week
Pick the appliance or device that would get the highest priority during a power outage at your house.
Then figure out what it actually uses.
If you have a portable power station that reports energy usage, plug the appliance into it and run it for a few hours.
If you have an energy meter, use that.
Don’t just look at the wattage for thirty seconds.
See what happens over time.
And if you don’t have any way to measure it, at least write down what you would power first, second, and third.
Then ask yourself:
How long could I realistically keep doing this?
You may find that your plan is better than you thought.
Or, like me, you may discover that one of the most important numbers in your emergency plan was really just a guess.
Either way, you’ll know more than you did before.
I’m Glad I Tested It
Before starting this article, I assumed I had a decent idea of how I would manage our backup power during an outage.
Most of the plan hasn’t changed.
I’d still prioritize the refrigerator.
I’d still reserve the smaller batteries for communications and lighting.
I’d still use the generator strategically and save solar for a longer-duration situation.
But now I have some real numbers.
Our refrigerator used about 42% of the Anker SOLIX C1000 in four hours.
Our standing freezer used about 37%.
Those numbers aren’t universal.
They aren’t even guaranteed to be exactly the same the next time I test them.
But they’re ours.
And for me, that’s the bigger lesson.
Preparedness gets a lot more useful when you stop asking:
“What should this equipment be able to do?”
And start asking:
“What can it actually do at my house?”
Practical resilience for everyday families.
