What size power station do you need to work from home through a power cut?
Short answer: 827 Wh of rated capacity — that's the ~1 kWh — mid-size class. A workday: router, laptop, and a phone top-up.
The math, appliance by appliance
Appliance
Avg draw
Hours used
Energy
Wi-Fi router + modem
12 W
8 h
96 Wh
Laptop
60 W
8 h
480 Wh
Phone charging
10 W
1 h
10 Wh
Energy needed over 8 hours
586 Wh
÷ 0.85 inverter efficiency
689 Wh
× 1.2 headroom (ageing, cold, overrun)
827 Wh
Recommended: ~1 kWh — mid-size class. Output check: 82 W continuous, 82 W surge.
Fridges and freezers use their average cycling draw for energy and full compressor draw for the output check — that's why the numbers differ from the label.
The bare energy need is 689 Wh after inverter losses; the extra 20% covers battery ageing, cold weather, and outages running long. A smaller unit works on a good day — this size works on a bad one.
What about output watts, not just capacity?
These loads draw 82 W continuously with no motor surges — any unit big enough on capacity is big enough on output.
Could solar keep this running indefinitely?
Roughly 586 W of panels replaces a day's usage with ~4 hours of decent sun at real-world (75%) efficiency. Half that solar doubles your runtime instead of sustaining it.