I have a couple of Ego brand lawn tools, and I've been impressed with the power. Along with the tools, I have several batteries in various sizes. The "big" one will power my mower for at least an hour without recharging, and in fact will last longer than me on the job. I've seen the company offer "stations" that use multiple batteries to provide power out doors or in an emergency. Since there is no risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, I'm considering one. Power outages in my area tend to be quite brief, lines around here are buried. I know almost less than nothing about electricity. I need a source that can translate capabilities in layman's terms, that is, how long can I use one of these stations to power certain appliances such as lights, etc? Hate to be blonde here, but most of my education is in less than technical areas. Some of these monsters are pretty large, and use multiple large batteries. The advertising literature claims one will power a refrigerator or microwave, but I'm more interested in lighting and charging phones, etc. in a pinch.

Since you are in the EGO environment, they have a selection of portable power stations, that would allow you to plug in electronics like your phone or iPad and a lamp or two.

Depends on what level and the number of batteries per the max allowed per unit, and the battery size be it 2.5 or 10.

I know that a half dead 2.5 runs the EGO portable light system I have so without a lot of draw it might give you want you need with the power out in a storm.

https://egopowerplus.com/portable-power/

The biggest EGO battery I see on their website is 12 amp hours, at 56 Volts- 12Ah*56V= 672 Watt Hours, or .67 Kilowatt hours. Watt hours is the best way to measure capacity of a battery- it's basically the amount of work that battery can support. Very basically, this means that best case their biggest battery can supply 672 watts for an hour, 336 watts for 2 hours, 67 watts for 10 hours, and so on.
Here is a chart that lists common household appliance energy use.

The chart is listed in kWh. Find the appliance you are interested in, divide the energy usage from the chart by .67, and that will give you the number of hours one of those batteries will support the appliance.

That's very simplistic, because converting between DC voltage and AC voltage isn't very efficient, and it looks like the power station I see on their website is 1400 watts, so you're not going to be able to run anything that requires more power than that.

TL/DR it will be great for small stuff, but running appliances will burn through your batteries fast. Assuming you have 4 of those batteries connected and ignoring all the conversion losses, the EGO power station would charge a phone 100+ times, run a single 5 watt LED bulb 2+ weeks, run a microwave for a couple of hours, run a space heater for an hour and a half (well, a 1400 watt power station probably won't even run the space heater on high), run a small window ac unit for an hour or two, run a fridge for a day or two (fridge has decent draw, but isn't running all the time so it would depend on conditions and how often you get in it etc).

If you go to the EGO page and select the portable power station you can select your batteries, or, any combination of EGO batteries 5, 10, 12 and it will show the run time of various household items based on that selection of batteries.

Pretty cool.

https://egopowerplus.com/nexus...table-power-station/

Running all 12's (4) you can run a fridge for up to 10 hours, TV 13.7, box fax 29, light 41, router, heater, coffee maker etc.

So you could plug in a fridge, your light and phone plus tv/cable box and get some decent run time with it inside, no generator noise or exhaust.

The basics of using batteries to power household gizmos is pretty simple. The details get complicated.

Basically, an electronic box called an inverter is used to convert the DC battery voltage to 120v AC. Then you can plug in your toaster, computer, tv, refrigerator, lights, etc. The bigger the battery the more it can power at a time, and the longer it can power a particular load. You also need an electronic box to control recharging the battery either by being plugged into the wall or by using solar panels.

How to implement this is the crux of your question. Normally, one would probably go buy a decent brand "power station" which is an all-in-one solution. It has a battery in it, plus the inverter, plus the recharging controller.

Since you already have batteries, a dedicated EGO brand product would probably be the most cost effective. Keep in mind that the power will be limited. If you want to charge a phone or keep a few LED lights on, it would probably be usable. I see they have a 150W inverter that you put your battery onto for about $120. 150W would run quite a few LED lamps (they tend to draw about 15% of what they say their equivalent light is, so an LED lamp equivalent to a 100W old light bulb would use about 15W). You're not going to keep the refrigerator running, or power the coffee maker or microwave with 150 watts. EGO's more powerful converters start getting pretty expensive, making them not cost competitive with all-in-one power stations intended to power major appliances imho.

If your EGO battery capacity is 5 amp hours (5 Ah), it would power that 150 watts for 4 hours. EGO batteries are advertised from 5 Ah to 12 aH. Since you have several of them, you could keep some lights on all evening no problem.

Keep in mind that the actual usable energy will be less than they claim.

Comparing this to an all-in-one gets more complicated, as they specify their products at 120V. But just looking at watts, your appliances and tv are each 500 to 1500 watts commonly.

It sounds like your just wanting to charge phones and a couple of lights. Depending on the type of cordless drill you have you can do that quite cheaply.

I have Dewalt so if you have a different brand maybe look up to see if they have something like this for your brand. I have a ton of battery's that can be swapped out and I have never run out of battery power doing what you want. I've never plugged in a fridge but lights and fans are no problem.


https://www.amazon.com/TANHEYI...ps%2C208&sr=8-9&th=1

You can buy a lot more power with an inverter and battery rather than buying a Bluetti or any of the other finished self contained units. I run a 165ah LiTime battery and a 2000 watt Voltwerks inverter to run my entire fish house for 3 days and 2 nights. Keep in mind you have to factor in 10% power useage just to run the inverter.

Thank you all. I have a much better understanding now. I'll do a bit more research with the tools you've provided, but it looks like a natural gas powered large generator is much more suitable to my needs.

quote:

Originally posted by Fredward:
Thank you all. I have a much better understanding now. I'll do a bit more research with the tools you've provided, but it looks like a natural gas powered large generator is much more suitable to my needs.

If you have NG it's the least cost solution and since it is piped in makes the best source.

A whole house generac would take care of everything, heat, ac, all fridge, lights, you want for nothing when it cranks up.

If you have medical issues and having power is important such as equipment for dialisis, cpap and medication in a fridge then Generac type generators are important.

You don't have to get up and turn on anything, drag it out of a garage, hook up etc.

If you are going to hook up one that not a whole house, get a transfer switch put in and you can connect it to that one point and just run whatever you need, just get a larger powered one to run everything.