What household appliances can lithium solar battery run during a power outage
Overview:
Even if you don’t have solar panels, lithium solar battery is a great way to make sure your most important equipment is up and running in a power outage. However, if you’re powering your entire house, this might not be the right solution.
So how do you determine which appliances can be powered by lithium solar batteries and, more importantly, how long they can stay running? We’ll help you find answers to these questions and more in our in-depth guide.
Identify your base load
Before you can even start thinking about which lithium solar batteries to use, you need to figure out which applications to power. These are called your “base load.”
You can make anything an essential load. Can’t live without watching TV? Make it essential. Do you need to do laundry when the power goes out? Make the washing machine an essential load.
Whatever you decide is essential will be placed on the spare load panel installed with lithium phosphate. It works the same as your regular circuit breaker, but it contains only the equipment you think must run during a power outage.Sometimes, lithium car battery can also play an important role.
Common base loads
Again, anything can be an essential load if you want, but what you choose will determine what kind of lithium phosphate you need. Most people don’t back up their entire house, instead choosing some of the most important things they need to get through an outage, like:
The refrigerator
The lamp
Wireless router
A few branches
TV
Electric oven
microwave
These loads ensure that your life continues to run smoothly, but do not require you to install a huge energy storage system. Adding more powerful appliances, such as air conditioners, may require more than one battery, which can cost a penny.
Figure out how much power output you need
The lithium phosphate output determines how many (and which) applications you can run.
Today, most lithium solar batteries have a sustained power output of about 5 kilowatts (kW), enough to run a standard refrigerator, clothes dryer and electric stove at the same time.
But chances are, those loads are different than the ones you want to run during a power outage. For example, the base load you want to run may require less lithium solar battery power.
Once you’ve determined what the base load is, it’s easy to determine how much power the lithium solar battery needs to release. All you have to do is find the wattage requirements for your appliance and add them all up. You can usually find the wattage listed on the label on the back or bottom of the device or in the user’s manual.
Here's an example using some of the common base loads we listed earlier:
Example 1. Total electrical demand for household base load
Baseload wattage
The refrigerator 700 watts
Lamp * 400 watts
Electric furnace 2500 W
Microwave 900 watts
Laptop Charger 61W
Phone charger 20 W
TV 77 W
WiFi router 5 W
Total power requirement 4,663 W
* Assume 40 10-watt LED bulbs
To run all of the above at once, you’d need a lithium phosphate with a minimum power output of 4,663 watts (or 4.66 kilowatts), which is in line with the capabilities of most lithium solar batteries.Sometimes, the lithium battery price is also a very important factor.
How long do you need power for
The size of the lithium solar battery determines how long your device can run.
When we talk about lithium solar battery size, we’re talking about how much power the battery can hold, in kilowatt-hours (kWh), for your home. This is often referred to as the “available capacity” of the solar battery.
Watt’s difference? Although kilowatts and kilowatt-hours sound the same, they are actually quite different. A kilowatt is a unit of power, and a kilowatt hour shows how much power is used over a period of time. How much energy is stored in a battery is usually measured in kilowatt-hours.
Most solar batteries are 10 KWH size and can operate:
The average refrigerator lasts 14 hours
130 hours of TV
1 LED bulb for 1,000 hours
2,000 hours of WiFi router
However, in the event of a power outage, it’s unlikely that you just want to back up one application. This means that if you want to power more appliances, you won’t be able to run the fridge for a full 14 hours because another load will simultaneously use the energy stored in the battery.
Let’s take a look at our base load again, using an example of how long a 10 kWh battery can power multiple applications in a home:
Example 2. Base load that can be powered by a 10 kWh battery
Base load watt-hour kWh consumption
Refrigerator 700 W 8 5.6 kWh
Lamp 400 W 5 2.0kwh
Electric furnace 2,500 W 0.5 1.25 kWh
Microwave 900 W 0.25 0.23 kWh
Mobile phone Charger 20 W 4 0.80kwh
TV 77 W 2 0.15kwh
WiFi Router 5 W 8 0.4kwh
Total KWH required 9.47 KWH
In this example, a 10 kWh battery will keep your most important loads (such as your fridge and WiFi router) running for 8 hours, and still allow you to use other applications before they need to be recharged.
If you install a 15 kWh battery, you may be running more loads than we list in this example. Or you can run the same load for a longer time.
Conclusion:
Lithium solar battery is a great way to get backup power to homeowners who have no problem running just a few appliances during a grid outage. Technically, you could power your entire home with batteries, but it would cost a lot of money.
Homeowners looking to back up their entire home may want a gas-fired generator because it ends up being cheaper than battery storage for an entire home. But the beauty of batteries is that they provide value not just during power outages. Even if the grid is up and running, you can use lithium solar batteries every day.
By using batteries to store excess solar energy, you can reduce your reliance on the grid, lower your electric bill, and maximize the clean electricity your home uses. Our Solar Calculator will give you an idea of how lithium solar battery storage affects your solar investment and how many batteries you need to power your particular home.
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