Portable solar generators and power stations

The units marketed as solar generators range from about 0.5 kWh up to 5 kWh of storage, with inverters from 500 W to about 3,600 W, and they charge from a wall outlet, a car port, or a folding solar panel. Rough market prices run $300–$4,000 depending on capacity and brand, and prices vary constantly. They are quiet, need no fuel, require no permit, and can be carried to a campsite, a job site, or the neighbor’s house. They are not generators in the fuel sense: once the battery is empty, they produce nothing until recharged.

The largest units, paired with an expansion battery and a transfer switch, can approach small-home-backup territory, but at that scale the cost and the wiring start to look like a permanent installation without the advantages of one — no automatic transfer, no charging from your rooftop during an outage, and no incentive eligibility. That is the point where our conversation with a customer changes.

Arithmetic is the whole game: kilowatt-hours in the box divided by kilowatts drawn. A refrigerator uses about 1–2 kWh a day, so a 2 kWh station keeps it cold for roughly one to two days, longer if you open the door rarely. A CPAP without the humidifier draws 30–60 W and runs for several nights. Phones, laptops, a router, and LED lamps are trivial. A gas furnace’s blower at 400–800 W runs a few hours from a 2 kWh unit, which matters in a January outage in Colorado Springs.

The loads it won’t handle: a well pump (240 V, about 1 kW running with a 2–3× starting surge that trips most portable inverters), central air conditioning at 3–5 kW, an electric range, or a Level 2 EV charger at 7–11 kW. A 5 kWh station with a 3,000 W inverter can run a space heater for a couple of hours, and then it is done. The box is excellent at small loads for a while and poor at large loads for any length of time.

Three Colorado situations tip the decision. First, wildfire safety shutoffs: Xcel has de-energized lines in high-wind events in December 2025 and again in 2026, and those outages can last a day or more with no notice of when power returns. Second, a well pump, common across Douglas, Elbert, Park, and the mountain counties, where no power means no water. Third, medical equipment such as oxygen concentrators or home dialysis, where a few hours isn’t a plan. In each, a 13.5 kWh Powerwall 3 or a comparable Enphase or SigenStor system, recharged by rooftop solar every day the sun shines, keeps the house running indefinitely at reduced load.

Cost is the honest counterweight. A first Powerwall 3 runs about $19,000 installed, an Enphase IQ Battery about $17,000 for the first 10 kWh, and a SigenStor $15,500 for 9 kWh, with additional capacity cheaper per unit. As of September 2026 Colorado exempts residential batteries from state sales tax through 2032 and offers a 10% state income-tax credit on battery purchases for tax years through 2026, a deadline worth noting; the federal 30% residential credit ended for systems placed in service after December 31, 2025. Confirm your own eligibility with a tax advisor.

A grid-tied rooftop system without a battery shuts down in an outage; that is a safety requirement, not a design flaw. So on an ordinary day you charge the station from any wall outlet, and the rooftop solar offsets that under net metering. In an outage you charge it from a folding 100–400 W panel, which at Colorado sun refills a 2 kWh station in roughly a day of good light, with the panel tilted and moved as the sun tracks. That combination — small array on the roof for the bill, box in the closet for a short outage — is a reasonable plan for a lot of households.

If you already have a permanent home battery, the power station becomes the thing you take camping, and its charging is a rounding error. If you are planning to add rooftop solar and a battery later, buy the box now for peace of mind and know that the battery, when it comes, will cover everything the box does and the well pump too.

Buy the portable station if: outages in your area are a few hours, you have gas heat and city water, nobody in the house depends on powered medical equipment, and you also want something for camping or a job site. A 1–2 kWh unit and a folding panel is a sensible few hundred dollars.

Talk to us about a permanent battery if: you are in a wildfire shutoff area, you are on a well, you have someone on medical equipment, you work from home and can’t lose a day, or you are on Xcel time-of-use and want the battery to carry the 5–9 pm on-peak window every weekday, which is the part of the purchase that pays for itself in ordinary weather. We size from your loads and tell you plainly when a $500 box would serve you just as well.