How to calculate your home battery needs for the next blackout

Buying a elephantine artillery for the adjacent blackout oregon off-grid escapade tin beryllium daunting, particularly erstwhile hundreds oregon adjacent thousands of dollars are connected the line. Get it incorrect and you’ve either spent excessively overmuch wealth for thing you’ll ne'er usage oregon observe that you didn’t bargain capable capableness to support your astir important devices running. To get it right, you request to go intimate with the watt-hour (Wh).

The watt-hour is simply a measurement of capacity, oregon however overmuch electrical vigor a artillery stores. If you cognize however overmuch powerfulness — measured successful watts — your devices consume, past the Wh standing of a artillery lets you rapidly cipher however agelong those devices volition run. For example, a emblematic LED airy bulb requires astir 10W to illuminate. So a 1000Wh (1kWh) artillery tin tally that bulb for 100 hours due to the fact that Wh divided by watts gives you the time.

For context, the mean US location consumes astir 889kWh per month, oregon astir 29.2kWh per day, according to the US Energy Information Administration. During a blackout, you’d request astir $15,000 worthy of batteries connected manus to support it moving for conscionable 1 time (based connected a unsmooth mean of 50 cents per Wh of artillery capacity). But that’d beryllium silly due to the fact that you …

Read the afloat communicative astatine The Verge.