Top pick
ALLPOWERS S2000 ProCheck price at ALLPOWERS — 1,451Wh at $549, giving about 14 hr 31 min on fridge, router and lights together.
The cheapest unit we track that carries this load with headroom and still finishes the job. Alternatives, and the sizing behind the pick, are below.
Manufacturer price at the time of writing. We may earn a commission, which never changes what the figures say.
The short answer
An apartment is the case a power station suits best, because the alternative does not exist. A fuel generator cannot run indoors or on a balcony, and a wired-in home battery needs an electrician and a landlord who agrees. A power station needs a socket to refill and a place to sit.
What it actually draws
- The realistic apartment load is a fridge averaging 50W, a router at 10W and some LED lighting, which lands around 85W continuous.
- A fridge does not draw continuously. It cycles, so the average matters more than the compressor start, though the inverter still has to survive that start.
- Nothing here needs installation. If you rent, that is the entire argument: the unit leaves when you do.
Working figure for this page: 85W for fridge, router and lights together, and 1,000Wh to cover an overnight outage with the fridge, router and lights running.
What size you need
| If you want | Energy needed | Buy at least |
|---|---|---|
| 4 hours | 340Wh | 400Wh rated |
| 8 hours | 680Wh | 800Wh rated |
| 12 hours | 1,020Wh | 1,200Wh rated |
| 24 hours | 2,040Wh | 2,400Wh rated |
The third column adds the 15% the inverter loses turning DC into AC. Buying to the middle column is the most common sizing mistake, and it leaves you short every time.
What to buy
| Model | Capacity | Output | Runtime at 85W | Price | Per Wh |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 ALLPOWERS S2000 Pro | 1,451Wh | 2,400W | 14 hr 31 min | $549 | $0.38 |
 Pecron E1500LFP Expandable 2200W 1536Wh V3 | 1,536Wh | 2,200W | 15 hr 22 min | $549 | $0.36 |
 BLUETTI AC180P | 1,440Wh | 1,800W | 14 hr 24 min | $649 | $0.45 |
 OUPES Mega 2 Home Backup | 2,048Wh | 2,500W | 20 hr 29 min | $699 | $0.34 |
 EcoFlow DELTA 3 Max Series (2048Wh) | 2,048Wh | 3,000W | 20 hr 29 min | $799 | $0.39 |
Cheapest first, one model per brand, filtered to self-contained power stations whose inverter carries this load with headroom to spare and whose battery finishes the job. Expansion batteries are excluded even where the numbers would qualify them, because they do nothing without a host unit. Anything that could not finish the job was left out rather than listed with a warning attached.
Questions
Can I run a power station indoors?
Yes. There is no combustion and no exhaust, which is exactly what separates it from a fuel generator. A generator must never be run indoors or on a balcony under any circumstances.
Will it run my air conditioning?
Almost certainly not, and this is where most apartment plans fail. A window air conditioner pulls well over 1,000W continuously and would flatten any of these units in under two hours. Plan for the fridge and the internet, not for cooling.
How do I recharge it in an outage?
From the wall once power returns, which is the honest answer for a flat with no roof access. If you have a balcony that catches sun, a portable panel extends the window considerably.
How we work these out
Runtimes are capacity multiplied by 0.85 and divided by the load, the same arithmetic used on every review and comparison page on this site, so the numbers agree wherever you meet them. Capacities, outputs and prices are the manufacturers’ own, held in the catalogue of 458 products we track. The load figures are the standard draws this site uses throughout rather than measurements of your particular appliance, so treat them as a starting point and check the label on anything you depend on.