Appliance Wattage Chart

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A refrigerator draws about 150 running watts and spikes to roughly 1,500 watts for a fraction of a second when its compressor kicks in; Honda’s generator sizing guide puts a 1,600-watt hair dryer at about 1,800 watts the whole time it runs, with a starting figure only 100 watts higher. Both numbers matter for different reasons, and the chart below lists both — running watts, starting watts and amps at 120V, plus where each figure comes from — in 81 rows of household appliances and tools, grouped by room.

Most of what is on this list runs on a standard 120V household outlet. A handful of larger appliances, marked 240V below, run on the dedicated high-voltage circuits wired for a clothes dryer, an electric range, central air conditioning, a water heater or an EV charger. At the same wattage, a 240V appliance pulls roughly half the amps a 120V one would, because volts and amps trade off against each other to produce the same watts.

Running and starting watts by room

Kitchen

Laundry

Climate and HVAC

Home office and electronics

Workshop, outdoor and well systems

Comfort, personal care and medical

Where these numbers come from

The last column of each table says where its row comes from. Rows marked Honda use the generator wattage estimation guide Honda publishes for sizing its generators, which gives approximate running and starting watts per appliance. It lists an ENERGY STAR refrigerator or freezer at 132–192W running and 1,200W starting, a 10,000 BTU window air conditioner at 1,500W and 2,200W, a 1/2 HP sump pump at 1,050W and 2,150W, a 1/8 HP furnace fan at 300W and 500W, and a 1,600W hair dryer at 1,800W and 1,900W. Where Honda gives the same starting and running figure for a heating element or an electronic load, the chart shows a dash. Honda’s table also flags furnace fans and sump pumps as 240V loads; one that plugs into a standard three-prong outlet runs on 120V, which is how the amps above are worked out, so check yours.

Rows marked ENERGY STAR are the median of the certified models listed in ENERGY STAR’s product data in October 2026. Rows marked Panasonic and Zojirushi come from the maker’s own spec page: Panasonic rates its 1,200W NN-SN686SAZH microwave at 1,480W consumption, about 12.3A at 120V, and Zojirushi rates its 5.5-cup NS-ZCC10 rice cooker at 680W and the 10-cup NS-ZCC18 at 1,000W. The Level 1 EV charging row uses the 1.9 kW that the Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center assumes for charging from a 120V outlet. Rows marked Typical are representative ratings for the category, not one particular model.

Sources do not always agree, which is why the nameplate on your own appliance overrides every row here. ENERGY STAR-certified 10,000 BTU window units have a median CEER of 15.0, which works out to an average of roughly 670W while cooling (10,000 ÷ 15), well under Honda’s 1,500W. The CPAP rows use the planning figures from our CPAP wattage guide: 30W with the humidifier off and 70W with the humidifier and heated tube on. For comparison, ResMed’s AirSense 11 user guide lists a 65W power supply, typical power consumption of 56.1W and a 73.2W peak.

How to read this chart

Running watts is what an appliance draws once it is up and going. Starting watts — sometimes listed as surge watts — is the brief spike anything with a compressor, a pump or an induction motor pulls for a fraction of a second at power-on. The nameplate’s locked-rotor amps (LRA) times its voltage is the worst case a power station’s inverter has to survive: for a 1/2 HP well pump that is about 5,300–7,400W, well above the 3,000W in the chart, which is what a generator needs to start it. A dash in the starting watts column means the appliance is a resistive load, such as a heating element, a light or a charger, and does not surge. Microwaves are sold by their cooking power, the wattage on the box; the input rating on the nameplate, which is what an outlet or a power station has to supply, is several hundred watts higher, and the microwave rows above use that input figure. Check your own model’s nameplate.

Amps is running watts divided by volts. For everything marked 120V that is running watts divided by 120; for the appliances marked 240V above, it is running watts divided by 240 instead, which is why a 5,000W electric dryer draws 20.8A rather than the 41.7A it would need on a standard outlet. Use the watts-to-amps calculator to check a model that is not on this list, or amps-to-watts if the nameplate only gives you a current rating.

Why starting watts matter

Starting watts is the figure that trips a breaker or stalls a small generator, not running watts. A refrigerator compressor can pull 5-7 times its running current for well under a second — a 150W fridge spiking to 1,000-1,500W on startup is normal — and a well pump or an air compressor does the same thing at a larger scale. Size a circuit, a generator or a power station to the starting watts of the single largest motor on it, not to its running watts, or the first time that motor kicks on, everything else on the circuit browns out or the breaker trips. This is the most common reason a power station that looks big enough on paper turns out not to be: the running-watts number was fine and the surge was never budgeted for. See watts to run a refrigerator for the worked example on the appliance that catches people out most often.

How to total a load for an outage

Add the running watts of everything you want on at the same time, then add the single largest starting watts figure from that list on top of the total — surges from separate motors usually come at different moments, but they can coincide, especially when the power comes back and several motors start at once, so stagger start-ups where you can or budget surge headroom for the two largest spikes. A refrigerator (150W running, 1,500W starting) plus a sump pump (800W running, 1,300W starting) plus a run of LED lights and a phone charger (call it 100W) comes to 1,050W running. Add the refrigerator’s 1,500W starting spike, the larger of the two, for a peak of roughly 2,550W, assuming the two do not start at the same moment. The running total is what a generator’s or power station’s continuous AC output rating has to carry, with some margin, so look for about 1,200W or more here; the peak is what its surge rating has to clear, even though only for well under a second.

The same 80% rule that keeps a household circuit from tripping under normal use applies here too: NEC 210.20 caps a continuously loaded circuit at 80% of its breaker rating, so a 15A circuit is good for 12A continuous and a 20A circuit for 16A. A 1,500W space heater already draws 12.5A on its own, which is over the 12A continuous limit of a 15A circuit — nothing else continuous belongs on that line.

Energy per day and cost per month

Watts decide whether a circuit, generator or power station can carry a load; kilowatt-hours decide what it costs and how long a battery lasts. Running watts times hours of use, divided by 1,000, gives kWh per day. The table below uses 30-day months and 18.2 cents per kWh, the US average residential price for January through July 2026 in the EIA’s Electric Power Monthly. State averages over the same months ran from 12.4 cents in North Dakota to 46.3 cents in Hawaii, so scale the last column to the rate on your own bill.

The refrigerator and freezer rows divide each category’s median certified annual energy use by 365 rather than multiplying watts by hours, because a compressor cycles on and off all day. Every other row is running watts times the hours shown. The same kWh figure is what a battery has to hold: the median full-size refrigerator’s 1.26 kWh a day fits inside a 2 kWh-class power station with room to spare, while a space heater’s 6 kWh a day does not.

What size power station each tier needs

Match the tier to your peak load, not to a capacity number that sounds reassuring. A CPAP machine, or a laptop and a phone charging overnight, is a sub-300W peak that a station such as the ALLPOWERS VOLIX P300 Portable Power Station 300W 256Wh (256 Wh, $119) clears with room to spare — see running a CPAP on battery power for the overnight-runtime math specifically.

A fridge, lights and a router on their own come to about 260W running and roughly 1,750W for the moment the compressor starts, so look for a station rated at least 1,000W continuous with 2,000W or more of surge; the BLUETTI AC70 Portable Power Station (768 Wh, $359) is rated 1,000W continuous, enough to run that load for a few hours, but its 1,500W surge rating falls short of that 2,000W, so for a full-size fridge the larger unit below is the safer pick. Add the sump pump from the example above and the load needs about 1,200W continuous and 2,600W of surge: the BLUETTI AC200L Portable Power Station (2,048 Wh, $899) is rated for that, but at the full 1,050W running total it lasts only about 1.7 hours (2,048Wh at 85% usable), so with the pump running often it is not an overnight answer.

A large window air conditioner, or anything else on a 120V outlet that starts with a surge above 3,000W, needs both the surge rating and the capacity headroom of a unit such as the EcoFlow DELTA Pro Solar Generator (PV400W) (3,600 Wh). A 240V well pump is different: the original DELTA Pro has 120V outlets only, so the pump needs a unit with native 240V output, such as the EcoFlow DELTA Pro 3, Anker SOLIX F3800 or Jackery Explorer 5000 Plus, or two units paired for 240V, and its starting surge has to fit inside that unit’s surge rating. A well pump is hardwired, so connecting it to any of them takes a transfer switch, or a power inlet with an interlock kit, installed by a licensed electrician; permit rules vary by locality.

Check the cost per watt-hour of any of these against the power station price index before buying — it varies more between models at the same capacity than most buyers expect — or run your own numbers through the power station finder. For sizing a whole-home or partial-home solar and battery setup rather than a single appliance, start with how to size a solar system. If a gas furnace blower is the load you are actually planning around, rather than anything in this chart, running a gas furnace on battery power covers it separately.

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