About

About Will It Run Lab

This site exists to answer a narrow question well: in a power cut, what can a portable power station actually keep on, and for how long?

The audience is households and renters in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia who are looking at home backup and portable solar — not at a whole-house fossil generator as the first step. We write in English for all four markets, and we flag voltage and plug differences when the published specs we cite are for a regional model.

Method

We estimate runtime as battery capacity in watt-hours, times an inverter efficiency factor, divided by load watts. Unless a manufacturer publishes a figure, we use 0.85 as a conservative planning factor. We convert official annual kilowatt-hour ratings to average watts with kWh ÷ 8,760 × 1,000. We use published starting and running watts — from sources such as Honda’s wattage estimation guide, and from appliance nameplates — to talk about whether an inverter can start and carry a load at all.

Appliance energy figures come from public official sources, including the ENERGY STAR certified residential refrigerator dataset and the US Energy Information Administration’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey. Power-station capacities, inverter ratings, and weights come from manufacturer product pages and manuals. Every article lists the URLs we used.

Articles now include formula charts and diagrams to make the assumptions visible. They remain planning explanations, not lab tests.

What we do not do

We do not invent laboratory test results, prices, or product scores. We do not claim to have measured a refrigerator in a shop when we have only done the arithmetic. Where a manufacturer’s marketing table states a runtime without stating the assumed load, we say so.

Nothing on this site is professional engineering, electrical, legal, or medical advice. Check the nameplate, the manual, your lease, and — for medical devices — your clinician.

Independence and funding

Will It Run Lab may in future earn commissions from brand affiliate programmes (including EcoFlow, BLUETTI, Jackery, and Anker SOLIX) and from Amazon Associates, and may later carry advertising. There are no affiliate links on the site today. When they appear, they will be disclosed as described in our affiliate disclosure.

Editorial estimates will still be based on cited public figures, not on who pays a commission.