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Solar panel and portable power station beside a vehicle camping setup
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Camping power sizing tool

What size power station do you need?

Pick your fridge, fan, devices, cooking style, and trip length. The calculator turns that into a daily watt-hour target, a capacity recommendation, and a realistic solar yield estimate. No marketing math.

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Sizing calculator

Pick the plain-English preset that matches your setup. Each preset already assumes a realistic appliance wattage; you only need to think about what you run and for how many nights.

How the calculator works

The math is the same one we walk through in the sizing guide. The calculator just runs it in your browser:

  1. Daily Wh need = sum of (fridge running watts * 24 hours * duty cycle) + (fan/lights watts * hours/day) + (devices Wh per charge * charges/day) + cooking Wh/day.
  2. Daily solar yield = panel rated watts * effective sun hours (default 4.5) * real-world loss factor (default 0.7).
  3. Required usable energy from battery = (daily Wh need - daily solar yield) * trip days, with a floor of zero (excess solar does not reduce the bank).
  4. Required gross battery capacity = required usable energy / 0.9 (LiFePO4 usable depth-of-discharge) * 1.25 (cloudy-day / inverter-loss margin).

What the verdict band means

  • Small (< 500 Wh): phone, lights, laptop weekends. No fridge.
  • Mid (500-1,500 Wh): the camping sweet spot - fridge + fan + laptop for 2-4 nights.
  • Large (1,500-3,600 Wh): week-long base camp, induction cooking, partial home backup.
  • Dual-battery LiFePO4 build: daily draw above 2,000 Wh sustained or permanent install territory.

What this tool cannot know

The calculator does not know your exact ambient temperature, your panel angle, your shade pattern, your appliance condition, or the recharge sources available at your specific sites. Use it to land in the right capacity band, then verify with a Kill-A-Watt on the appliances you actually own. Real-world variance is wide; sizing to the middle of the recommended band leaves you headroom for the bad-weather days.

Sources

Where the appliance and solar numbers come from

Manufacturer datasheets for compressor draw and fan wattage; NREL PVWatts for effective sun hours; LiFePO4 datasheets for usable depth-of-discharge.

  1. [1] Dometic CFX3 compressor fridge specifications Source for compressor wattage and duty-cycle ranges on 35L, 55L, and 75L 12V fridges.
  2. [2] MaxxAir Maxxfan Deluxe specifications Source for fan wattage at low, medium, and high speeds.
  3. [3] NREL PVWatts solar production calculator Independent reference for effective sun hours by latitude and panel orientation.
  4. [4] EcoFlow blog: real solar panel output Manufacturer-published efficiency factor (70-75 percent of rated panel watts) under typical conditions.
  5. [5] Battle Born / Renogy LiFePO4 datasheets Reference for LiFePO4 usable depth-of-discharge (90-95 percent of gross capacity).