The best portable power stations for a sump pump

Who this is for

You have a pump in a pit that fills when it rains hard, and you would rather not learn what happens when the same storm takes the power out. You want something that runs indoors, starts the pump on its own with nobody standing there, and keeps the router and a few lights going while it does.

If what you want is the fridge and the freezer through an outage, that is our page on portable power stations for home backup. If your pump is wired into a circuit rather than plugged into a socket, none of these does that job on its own: read the generator page and talk to an electrician. And if you are weighing one of these against a dedicated battery-backup pump, read the last question on this page first.

How much battery you need

Two numbers come out of this plan and only one of them decides the pick. Keeping everything running takes 730 to 1,620 watts, which is the easy part. Starting the pump takes 2,030 to 4,620 watts for a split second, and a station whose peak rating falls short of that does not run the pump weakly, it does not start it at all.

The energy range is wider still, because a sump pump's duty cycle is the weather. In a dry week the pit fills slowly and the pump runs a few minutes in the hour; in the storm that took the power out, water arrives faster than that and the pump can run a third of the time or more. Across 24 hours that is the difference between 1,230 and 14,040 watt-hours. The pump is almost all of it, and the router and the lamps together barely move the total.

We size on the storm rather than the dry week. Of the 58 stations we evaluated, 28 are workable at all, 0 cover the storm end outright and 28 cover the quiet end only. So the shape of the advice is this: buy the peak rating that will start your own pump, expect a quiet day to be covered and a bad one not to be, and treat anything past that as a recharge problem rather than a bigger-box problem.

A sump pump, Wi-Fi and a few LED lights for 24 hours, run against all 58 units we track: 28 clear at least the best case, 27 do not, and 3 could not be judged (a missing maker figure or an unresolved recall identity). Every figure is from the maker’s own page or manual; nothing here was tested by us. The method.

Day two and three

Three days (72 hours) of the same loads needs 3,690 to 42,120 watt-hours. None of the three picks covers even the bottom of that on a single charge, and neither does anything else we track, so past the first day the question stops being which box and becomes how you put energy back into it.

Storms tend to give the grid back in patches, and a wall outlet settles the whole argument in an hour or two; all three charge fast enough to be worth topping up in the lull. If the grid stays down, the refill is the sun, and here the picks are far apart. The Anker SOLIX F3800 accepts several times the solar input of the Jackery Explorer 2000 v2, whose own reviewers called its ceiling undersized for a battery that size, with the EcoFlow DELTA 2 Max between them. Panels deliver less than their rating and a storm sky less again, so if your outages are the multi-day kind, buy the expansion battery before the second panel. It works in the dark.

Hooking it up safely

The plug-in path is the plan on this page. The station sits indoors, the fridge, router and lamps plug into its outlets, and nothing touches the house wiring. That is the only path this page sizes.

If the station sits between the wall and the fridge in pass-through mode, the fridge keeps running when the grid drops and the station picks up the load. The switchover time and pass-through behaviour, where the maker publishes them, are listed under each pick above. A fridge tolerates a brief gap; a desktop computer may not.

Wired loads are a different job. A well pump, a furnace or a whole circuit needs a transfer switch or a power inlet installed by a licensed electrician. Never feed a station or a generator into a wall outlet: it backfeeds the line and can kill the crew restoring your power. The safety boundaries.

Output quality. A compressor wants a pure sine wave; that phrase belongs on the maker’s spec page, and a modified-sine inverter is the thing to avoid.

Buying it right

A search for any of these models returns bundles, sibling models and, often, the same unit under two listings at different prices. We link only a listing whose own title states the bare unit and its exact battery and output; the box should say the same. Check the seller is the maker or Amazon itself, and that the model number on the label matches the one on this page.

EcoFlow DELTA 2 Max

• The listing we verified: “EF ECOFLOW Portable Power Station DELTA 2 Max 2048Wh, 2400W LiFePO4 Battery”, $1,049 when checked. Title states 2048Wh and 2400W, matching our record exactly.
• “EF ECOFLOW DELTA 2 Max Power Station Extra Battery, 2048Wh LiFePO4 Battery”, $879: the same unit under a second listing at $879; we link the cheaper verified one.
• “EF ECOFLOW DELTA 3 Max Portable Power Station, 2048Wh LFP Battery, 2400W”, $1,199: a different model that a search for this one returns.
• “EF EcoFlow Delta 2 Max Portable Power Station with 800W Alternator Charger”, $1,249: a bundle, not the bare unit; the extra hardware is in the price.
• “EF ECOFLOW DELTA 2 Max Portable Power Station, 2048Wh, 2400W”, $1,399: the same unit under a second listing at $1,399; we link the cheaper verified one.

Jackery Explorer 2000 v2

• The listing we verified: “Jackery Explorer 2000 v2 Portable Power Station, 2042Wh, 2200W AC Output”, $999 when checked. Title states 2042Wh and 2200W, matching our record exactly.
• “Jackery HomePower 2000 Plus v2 Power Station, 2048Wh, 2400W AC Output”, $1,071: a different model that a search for this one returns.
• “Jackery Explorer 2000 v2 and 2x200W Solar Panels, 2042Wh, 2200W AC Output”, $1,639: a bundle, not the bare unit; the extra hardware is in the price.

Anker SOLIX F3800

• The listing we verified: “Anker SOLIX F3800 Portable Power Station, 3,840Wh”, $2,200 when checked. Title states 3840Wh and the exact model name with no variant word; it does not state a wattage, so output was not cross-checked against our 6000W record. (previously verified ASIN, re-checked by direct lookup)
• “Anker SOLIX F3800 Portable Power Station and 400W Solar Panel, 3,840Wh”, $2,400: a bundle, not the bare unit; the extra hardware is in the price.
• “Anker SOLIX F3800 Portable Power Station, 3840Wh, LiFePO4 Batteries, Ultra-High 6000W AC Output with 120V/240V, Solar Generator for Home Backup and Outdoor Camping (Renewed)”, $1,759: Listing is renewed/refurbished, not the new base unit..

What this page can’t promise

This page sizes a battery against a pump. It does not know how fast water comes into your pit, which is the number that decides everything here, and it cannot promise you a dry basement. It is also worth saying plainly that this is the one appliance you back up while standing in the place that floods: keep the station up off the floor and well away from the pit, and do not wade anywhere to reach it.

Nothing here was tested by us. The figures are the makers' own, read off their pages and manuals and cited under each pick, and where a marketing page and a printed manual disagree we say so rather than take the better number. What owners report comes from public threads and hands-on review sites and is labelled as such.

The competition

Every unit we track was run against the same plan. The ones that clear at least the best case are below with their own shortfall; the ones that do not are listed with the rule they fail.

Other plans we sized

• Home backupThe best portable power stations for home backup

  A fridge, the internet, a few lamps and everyone's phones through a day without the grid, indoors, with no engine to run. Sized on the harder end of every range.

• Camping and road tripsThe best portable power stations for camping

  Two nights of phones, a laptop and a few lights is a small job with a wide range, and the range is what catches people out. All three picks cover the easy end of it on one charge; the hard end takes a panel at the site or a full charge before you leave.

• CPAPPortable power for a CPAP machine: one night, and three

  A CPAP is a small, steady load, so this comes down to battery size and one switch: the heated humidifier. Covering a single night is settled; covering three, or running the heat, takes a bigger box.

• Portable generatorsThe best portable generators for home backup

  Three generators judged on the one number that decides the job: the watts on tap for the second a fridge and a chest freezer both restart at once. Not battery capacity, and not the running total.

• ComparedThe home-backup class: DELTA Pro 3, SOLIX F3800, Explorer 5000 Plus and the rest

  The largest portable power stations on one table, run against a full-day household plan, with expansion paths, 240V output and the makers' gaps marked.

• RefrigeratorHow much battery it takes to run a refrigerator, and which power station does it

  A fridge is the appliance everyone wants kept running, and the one whose appetite varies most from house to house. Size it on the harder end of that range and the choice of station mostly makes itself.

• FurnaceThe best portable power stations for a gas furnace

  A gas furnace burns its own fuel and asks the grid only for the blower and the control board, which is the good news. The bad news is that both are wired into the house, so the battery is half the job and an electrician is the other half.

• Well pumpThe best backup power for a well pump

  A well pump is the hardest start in an ordinary house, and it is wired in at 240 volts rather than plugged into anything. That is why this plan usually lands on a generator, and why every figure here is sized on the harder end of its range.

• ComparedAnker SOLIX F3800 vs F3800 Plus: the real differences

  The Anker SOLIX F3800 and F3800 Plus side by side from Anker's own figures, judged against one full-day household plan, with the real differences marked.

• ComparedJackery Explorer 1000 v2 vs 1000 Plus: the expandable one or the cheaper one

  Jackery's Explorer 1000 v2 and 1000 Plus on one table from the maker's own figures, judged against one fridge plan, with the 2000 v2 for scale.

• Camping with a fridgeThe best portable power stations for camping with a fridge

  Put a compressor fridge in the back of the car and it becomes most of the battery: it is the one thing in your kit that keeps drawing while you sleep. We size this page from the hard end of every range.

• GuidePower station or generator: which do you actually need?

  This is the decision that comes before choosing a product, and it is the expensive one to get wrong in either direction. A battery bought for a well pump is wasted money; a standby generator bought to keep a router alive is a great deal more of it.

• GuideHow to connect a power station to your house

  These four methods differ less in how much power they move than in what they can reach: a cord reaches a plug, transfer equipment reaches a circuit. The fifth thing people try, a cord into a wall socket, can kill the line worker restoring your power.

• GuideSolar panels for a power station: how many, and how long

  Panels are where the optimism creeps into a backup plan. The arithmetic is simple enough to do on the back of an envelope, and the answer it gives you is the best case, not the likely one.

• GuideExpansion batteries: what an extra battery for a power station actually does

  An extra battery for a power station is the cheapest-sounding fix for the wrong problem about half the time. It buys hours, it does not buy watts, and the pack you buy has to be the exact one your station was built for.