Solar generators for home backup: what they can and can't run

What a solar generator is

There’s no engine in a solar generator. It’s a portable power station, meaning a lithium battery with an inverter and outlets, sold with folding solar panels that plug into it. During an outage you run appliances from the battery, and in daylight the panels top it back up.

That makes it different from a fuel generator in almost every way. It’s silent, gives off no fumes, needs no fuel run during a storm, and starts instantly. It’s also limited by what the battery holds and what the panels can make in a day, which is less than most people expect.

How much can it run?

Start with your daily needs. A fridge-freezer uses about 1 to 2 kWh a day, a router and modem about 0.3 to 0.5 kWh, LED lights in a few rooms about 0.3 kWh, and charging phones and a laptop a little more. Most households’ essentials come to roughly 3 to 7 kWh a day, while a whole home averages around 28 kWh in the US.

A 1 kWh power station holds about 0.85 kWh of usable mains power after inverter losses. On its own, that keeps a fridge going for roughly half a day to most of a day. A 2 kWh unit covers essentials for most of a day. Panels then decide whether you can keep going tomorrow.

How many panels do you need?

A rough rule: each 100 W of panels makes about 0.35 to 0.4 kWh on a day with 4 to 5 hours of good sun, after losses. In winter or under cloud, expect a third to half of that, sometimes less.

So a single 200 W panel won’t keep up with a fridge on its own, but 400 W will in summer. To cover all your essentials day after day, you’d want 1,000 W or more of panels and a battery of 2 kWh or larger, which means a lot of panels to set out, angle toward the sun and pack away again.

Check your power station’s solar input limit too. Current 1 kWh models accept roughly 400 to 1,000 W, and 2 kWh models more.

Connecting it to your house

There are three ways to use a solar generator in an outage, from simplest to most capable.

Extension cords. Plug the fridge, router, lamps and chargers straight into the power station. No electrician, no permit, and it works with any model.

A transfer switch. An electrician installs a switch or a small subpanel that lets the power station feed a few chosen circuits, so hard-wired things like the furnace blower or a well pump can run. Several power station makers sell their own transfer switches.

A whole-home setup. The largest units, such as EcoFlow’s DELTA Pro 3 or Jackery’s Explorer 5000 Plus, output 120/240 V and can connect to a home panel through an inlet and an interlock or a smart panel. That’s what lets them run 240 V appliances.

Never backfeed your house by plugging a power station into a wall outlet with a homemade double-male cord. It can energize the wiring, start a fire, and send power back into the street where line workers are repairing cables.

What a solar generator costs

These are bundle prices on the makers’ US sites on 4 November 2026:

Extra panels cost a few hundred dollars each. Jackery listed its SolarSaga 200W at $429 as an add-on, for example. Whole-home units start in the thousands before panels, and a transfer switch adds the electrician’s bill.

Solar generator or gas generator?

A fuel generator gives more hours per dollar in a long outage. A solar generator wins on everything else, and many households end up with both: the battery for instant, quiet power, and a small generator to recharge it if an outage drags on.

Who should buy one

A solar generator makes sense if your outages are usually measured in hours or a day or two, if you want backup you can use indoors without fumes, or if you also camp, work off-grid or live in an RV. It also doubles as a solar powered outlet for a yard, garden or shed. Start with a 1 to 2 kWh unit and 200 to 400 W of panels, and add more once you know what you actually use.

If you want backup that switches on by itself and covers the whole house, look at installed home batteries instead. For specific models, see our best portable power stations.