Boat, RV, Camping and Home Appliances Wattage Chart

When being off-the-grid, and when wanting to use some of the household appliances, it is important to know how much power those appliances require in order to run them smoothly.

Also, it is very important to know the remaining power of your power source and its remaining runtime - too many times people drain their batteries and burn their fuel powering non-essential devices, leaving essential devices without the power source when most needed.

Published: July 24, 2020.

The following charts list some of the most common household, office, outdoors, and other appliances and their Running and Starting watts.

Note: these are 'just' general values. The best practice is to check the actual Running and Starting watts ratings of your devices in order to know more accurately the required power.

As one can see, running watts of most appliances are within the power range of portable power generators, but starting watts can cause issues.

For example, one of the most popular compact and lightweight power generators is Honda EU2200i, which features 1800 running watts with a maximum output of 2200 watts.

As such, Honda EU2200i is able to power even RV 15.000 BTU Air Conditioner (1700 Running Watts, 2700 Starting Watts), but actual starting may cause the generator's circuit breaker to pop-out and disconnect the power generator from the load in order to prevent the damage.

When picking up the right power generator, always be sure that both Running and Starting Wattage ratings are within the capabilities of the power generator. Also, having a somewhat stronger power generator (at least 20-30%) is a good safety measure, because there are always additional devices that must be powered during power outages.

In the long run, the "Parallel Ready" feature can be of great help - having two power generators that can be connected in parallel allows the user to double the output power.

Again - the best practice is to check the power requirements of actual devices and write them down. Having them listed can be of great help in avoiding power issues when powering them with portable power generators, power stations or using deep cycle batteries and power inverters.