Can You Survive a 24-Hour Outage with a Power Station? - Backup Power with the Anker F3800
With Florida’s recent hurricanes wreaking havoc on the power grid and winter storms right around the corner, we felt right now was the perfect time to see how prepared we are for a full day without power.
Like most people, we’re no strangers to blackouts here at The Solar Lab, so simulating what a 24-hour power outage would look like with a power station felt like something our readers would be interested in.
To do so, we put the Anker F3800 Power Station and one expansion battery through a 24-hour real-world test. While the F3800 is a solid unit for this type of demonstration, there are plenty of other power stations out there that could be used to show similar results.
Whether you’re preparing for an emergency situation or just curious about short-term backup power solutions, this guide will help you understand just how practical portable power stations can be during a power outage.
Why Did We Choose the Anker F3800?
While there are plenty of power stations that we could have chosen for this demonstration, the Anker F3800 is one of the most popular units on the market right now. We’ve also noticed that this unit generates a lot of questions and comments from our YouTube audience, so it seemed like the perfect candidate for this type of test.
On top of that, the heavy-duty Anker F3800 is just a really high-quality power station that is perfect for blackouts and other situations that call for portable backup power.
For the purpose of this test, we kept things realistic: no fancy transfer switches or permanent setup, just the power station and a single expansion battery.
The goal here was to simulate an average person’s day during an outage with a power station available.
Setting Realistic Expectations
Before we dive into the test, it’s important to set realistic expectations about what you can actually do with a power station.
Let’s be real—most people aren’t going to whip up a five-course meal during a power outage or tackle a renovation project, but it’s still worth mentioning that the goal with this test is just to power essential appliances and keep life as normal as possible until the grid is up and running again.
Whenever you have a limited supply of stored power, you have to be somewhat conservative with what electronics and appliances you run and for how long you run them.
Another thing that has to be addressed is the issue of heat and air conditioning. AC units, furnaces, and heat pumps are all really heavy power consumers that most portable power stations are simply not designed to handle.
Just as an example, the heat pump here at The Solar Lab draws 2,500 watts. Even if we used the F3800 to run it, it would only heat or cool a small area, and it would drain the F3800’s battery pretty fast. If heating or cooling is non-negotiable, you’ll need to look into a full home backup system, or a power station with an array of expansion batteries.
If you’re in an area where heating and cooling your home isn’t just a matter of comfort, but something you need to do for survival, you could also supplement your power station with something like a wood-burning stove, gas generator, or just running a portable space heater or fans rather than a full HVAC system.
Basically, a portable power station isn’t going to cut it when it comes to heating or cooling an entire home. Realistically, you’d have to invest in a permanent solar power system that has a high-capacity battery bank to achieve this.
Again, this experiment focuses on powering essential devices and appliances without any advanced setups like transfer switches. It’s just a practical, straightforward look at what you can achieve with a power station during an outage.
Simulating a 24-Hour Power Outage
So, now that we’ve addressed the heating and cooling issue, let’s get into our test.
Since we have noticed that most power outages seem to happen overnight, we decided that we’d start our simulated power outage as if we woke up in the morning without power.
Waking Up and the Start of the Outage:
Our test began early in the morning with the idea being this would look like a typical day where you wake up to the dreaded feeling that your house has lost power.
After crawling out of bed, we rolled the Anker F3800 into the kitchen and plugged in the refrigerator—a top priority for pretty much anyone during a power outage. After all, who really wants to lose all those expensive groceries while you wait for grid power?
When the fridge cycled on, it spiked briefly to 400 watts, but settled at a steady draw of 30 watts after a few seconds. Fridges can be power-hungry in cycles, but they’re pretty efficient once they’re up and running. If you’re curious about the power demands of a modern fridge, we have a video where we tested how much power one actually uses.
After tackling the fridge, the next task was to get the Wi-Fi router up and running. Whether you work from home or live in an area with unreliable cell service, having access to the internet during an outage can be a game-changer. Our router uses roughly 12 watts per hour, so it’s not a huge power drain.
We wanted to leave these two essentials running for the full 24-hour test period, as that’s probably what most people would do in a power outage situation. We calculated that this combination would consume approximately 1,008 watt-hours (Wh), especially if we minimized the number of times that we opened the fridge door.
Lighting, Breakfast, and the Essential Task (Making Coffee):
Navigating in the dark isn’t ideal, so we plugged in three 9-watt light fixtures for a total of one hour. This gave us enough light for the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom—pretty typical for what you would need in the early morning.
Keep in mind that the 9W fixtures we used draw more power than a modern LED bulb, which will usually draw about 4 watts. So, if you’re looking to make your home ready for outages, it can be a good idea to invest in these types of low-cost efficiency upgrades.
Next up, the most important task of any morning: the coffee. The draw for our power-hungry coffee maker is about 908 watts, but it only needs to run for about five minutes to brew a pot, so getting our caffeine fix only cost about 76Wh of the F3800’s battery power.
Once the coffee was brewed, we unplugged the machine to avoid wasting unnecessary power running the warming plate that sits beneath the carafe. For breakfast, we just went with a simple helping of toast, which required running our 835-watt toaster for about three minutes, resulting in a total power draw of about 42Wh.
So, after this first hour of completing a typical morning routine, we had used about 143.5Wh. Keep in mind this total excludes the fridge and Wi-Fi router, which we’ll add to the final tally.
It’s also worth remembering that a fully charged Anker F3800 can store 3.84kWh of power, which can be doubled with a single expansion battery. This means our morning routine has been a breeze for the F3800 we were using.
Getting Through the Workday:
For the purposes of this test, we wanted to simulate a typical “work from home” day without grid power.
While you wouldn’t be working in a disaster scenario, let’s just pretend the power is out due to a severe snowstorm, so you’re not going to leave the house, and might just decide to work from home.
In a situation like this, you’d need enough power to keep your essentials running for a full workday. So, we plugged a computer into the F3800 for a full eight hours. For the desktop computer we used, this meant an additional power draw of about 65 watts per hour.
Keep in mind that 65 watts is a fairly versatile power draw: it could also be used to power two fans, a TV for keeping kids entertained or staying updated on the news, or pretty much the majority of standard electronics people have in their homes.
We also ran one of those 9-watt lights for an hour, as this accounted for basic power requirements you might have during the work day, like charging your phone.
Midway through the day, we also used the microwave for a total of four minutes to make lunch. While the microwave has a really hefty power draw of 1,400 watts, it doesn’t need to run for long, so it consumes a relatively small amount of power.
By the end of our pretend workday, we had used 622Wh. Again, we didn’t include the fridge or the router in this calculation, which were both continuing to draw power in the background.
After “Work” Evening Activities:
When our simulated workday ended, we got down to some basic evening activities. We decided to leave the computer running for another five hours and turned on the three 9-watt lights to simulate typical household lighting.
We also turned on a TV and ran it for five hours, as we figured most people would either be watching for entertainment, or to watch for news updates on the power situation.
With the 60W TV running for five hours, it pulled 300Wh of power, while the three lights consumed 135Wh in the same five hours. The computer added another 325Wh to the total. All of this brought our evening total to a fairly reasonable 760Wh if you don’t include the fridge and router.
Depending on your priorities, you could easily swap out some of this usage for other appliances and devices. Given that we would likely want to preserve as much power as possible if we were facing a power outage that lasted this long, we cooked dinner on the BBQ, but you could have used some of the power needed to run the TV and computer for a microwave, toaster oven, air fryer, or whatever.
Total Power Use:
By the end of the 24-hour period, here’s what we powered and how much of the F3800’s stored power they each used:
Refrigerator: 720Wh (30W x 24 hours)
Wi-Fi Router: 288Wh (12W x 24 hours)
Lights: 360Wh (9W x 10 hours)
Computer: 845Wh (65W x 13 hours)
Coffee Maker & Toaster: 118Wh (908W x 5 minutes + 835W x 3 minutes)
Microwave: 93Wh (1,400W x 4 minutes)
TV: 300Wh (60W x 5 hours)
Total Power Usage: Approximately 2,535Wh over 24 hours.
With its expansion battery, the Anker F3800 has a total capacity of about 6,000Wh, leaving us with plenty of backup power to spare after a day of fairly conservative power use.
To say we’re talking about a highly portable setup with wheels, the F3800 easily proved itself to be a solid choice for essential backup power during outages.
Again, your power needs and preferences will dictate what you actually need to power during a blackout, but we wanted to simulate a typical day at home for the average person.
Idle Power Drain
One thing that often gets overlooked with power stations is idle power consumption. Even when you’re not actively powering any devices, it’s important to remember that the unit itself still uses power just to stay on.
This is known as idle power use, and while it may seem insignificant, it can add up over the course of a lengthy power outage. This is particularly true if your power outage continues through the night. Basically, your power station is going to continue using stored battery power while you sleep, even if you don’t have anything plugged into it.
During our test, we measured the idle power draw of the Anker F3800. With nothing plugged in, the main unit consumed around 10 watts per hour just to keep its internal systems running. Over a full day, that adds up to 240 watt-hours of capacity gone without powering anything.
This is because power stations like the F3800 store DC power, which has to be converted to AC power to run your devices and appliances. In doing so, the inverter itself pulls power. Then you have other internal power requirements, like the cooling fans and the display screen.
240Wh might not sound like much when you consider the total 6,000Wh of available storage capacity you would get with the F3800 and an expansion battery, but if you're running a tight energy budget during a lengthy outage, it’s something to keep in mind. It’s also something we are going to make a bigger effort to test in our upcoming power station reviews.
Key Takeaways and Our Final Thoughts
While this test focused on a practical 24-hour scenario, your exact needs will probably vary. If you prioritize running a heater, fans, or additional appliances, you’ll need to calculate your watt-hour requirements and possibly look into a permanent whole-home system if they exceed what you can meet with a portable power station.
Another thing to keep in mind is ways you can help manage and reduce your power requirements without really impacting your comfort. For starters, focus on what you really need, like your fridge, router, and lights. Luxuries like running a TV or cooking appliance will drain your power faster.
If you can, pick up a book rather than watching TV, eat something that doesn’t need to be cooked or something you can make on the BBQ rather than pulling power to heat your food, and open your blinds for light rather than using lamps. These small changes in behavior may sound insignificant, but they can make a huge difference in a situation where you have lost power for multiple days.
Another thing that always helps is using short bursts of power, like brewing a pot of coffee, then unplugging the coffee maker so it doesn’t continue to draw power just to keep your coffee warm. If you’re not sure when you will have power again, you don’t want to waste power on things like heating coffee you’re not going to drink for an hour.
In the end, the Anker F3800 Power Station proved to be an excellent option for emergency preparedness, but it’s not the only option out there. If you’re thinking of investing in a backup system, check out our power station reviews and choose something that matches your own power needs and budget.
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