How big does my solar generator have to be to run my household?

To determine what size generator you require, you need to define how much power you need. Rather than doing the calculations to determine the wattage to run your home’s different appliances instead give yourself a break and look at a few of your recent electric bills to see how much power you routinely use in a month. (If you don’t keep your previous bills, you can access them by going to your current electric supplier’s website and view your past usage and bills.) We make this suggestion because you won’t run every appliance you have simultaneously, nor will your appliances be working 24 hours a day and seven days per week.

Past power use is a good gauge of future power use. Of course, occasionally, we are faced with situations where we have heavier power draws than expected because of extremely hot or extremely cold weather where AC systems or furnaces are running longer and harder to keep your home comfortable. So, if you can review your seasonal electric bills it might help in determining the size of a generator you will need.

Locate the kWh usage (kilowatt-hours usage) on your recent monthly electric bills. Now, select your largest power usage number and add 20% more.

The reasons for this 20% cushion are important:

There is the difference between starting wattage and running wattage. Some motor-driven appliances have a starting up period (lasting only 2 or 3 seconds) where it is surging or drawing a lot more power as it starts. (Product decals list running wattage, not starting wattage.)

When appliances age they can become less efficient, and their power draw can increase. An appliance that only drew 800-watts of power when new, could be pulling 900 to 1000 watts when old.

Finally, you want this 20% power buffer to ensure you don’t run your generator system constantly at its maximum power capacity because doing this can reduce the life of your generator.

Given these basic details, how do you select the right generator?

Choosing between a portable solar generator and a larger solar generator.

Size does matter for solar generators to power a house.

Small generators basically have 1000Wh of storage or less, enough to charge a home’s lights or electronics for a few hours.

Medium generators have capacities between 1000Wh and 2000Wh and are sufficient to be both portable and/or a backup power source.

Large generators are the best option to power up your entire home. With a minimum of 2000Wh electricity storage, it could provide power longer than either the small or a medium generator. Typically, a large generator could run an entire house for 2-8 hours or more depending on the load of power-consuming devices.

What if I already have solar panels but no battery storage?

It should be addressed that some people are in the situation where they have long had roof-top or yard solar panels, but their excess power was fed back into the grid. If people in this situation add a solar-powered backup generator system to their existing solar panels, they can store the excess power that their solar panels generate. This means with a solar generator battery system homeowners will realize greater benefits than with solar panels alone.

If you currently have a grid-tied solar system where your excess solar energy gets sent back to the utility grid, then you need to get a Nature’s Generator. With your solar panels charging your Nature’s Generator’s battery banks you will no longer be sending your excess power back to the grid, you will be saving it, and storing it for later use. This stored power can keep your own home running when an emergency strikes causing an extended power outage and taking the grid offline.

Solar panels consistently generate energy -- when they generate more energy than you’re using then that excess energy is stored in the generator’s battery bank to give you backup power during emergency situations.