You are listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper, sponsored by Duct Tape, the real duct tape. It fixes everything except that decision. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America. From border to border, coast to coast, and all ships at sea. Here is your host, Keith.
SPEAKER_01Hey everybody, this is Keith, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast for July 14, 2026. So continuing our series, Building Your Arc, this is episode four. Episode one, we talked about water. Episode two, security. Episode three was food. And today we're talking about power. So the same framework as the other three. One week, family of four, realistic budget, and you can put this together in one or two shopping trips. We're not wiring a solar farm. We're not out spending five grand on a whole house generator. We are answering one simple question. When the power goes out for one week, what do you actually need to keep your
family functional? So let's do the math. Before we talk about our different options and what we can buy, we need to talk about what we actually need to run or what we actually need to provide power to. Because here is one of the mistakes, probably the biggest mistake that most people make. They go buy a generator or a power station without figuring out what they want to plug into it. They either buy way too much and overspend, or they buy too little and can't run what really matters to them. So we're going to break it down. For one week power outage, here are your critical loads, the things that actually keep your family safe and functional for that week. Phone charging. To charge a phone between 5 and 15 watts per phone. Got a family of four, that's maybe 60 watts total per day. So this is your communication, your flashlight, and your map, your news source. Very much a priority. Lighting. LED lanterns and LED bulbs draw almost nothing. 5 to 10 watts each, three or four lights running in the evening, so we're talking 20 to 40 watts. Very minimal. Fans. A box fan draws between 50 and 75 watts. A small USB or battery fan, 5 to 10 watts. In July, in the kind of heat that we've been having recently here on the East Coast, having fans are not there for just comfort. They're there for safety, especially for the elderly or young family members. Talk about the fridge. Now this is a big one, obviously. A standard fridge draws between 100 and 400 watts when the compressor is running. But here's the thing the compressor does not run continuously. It cycles off and on. On the average, in the United States, a fridge uses one to two kilowatt hours per day. That's pretty significant. If you can keep the fridge running, you save hundreds of dollars worth of food from spoiling. So that's a real return on the investment, what you're going to purchase, what you're going to use to keep the fridge cold. Medical devices. So if anyone in your house uses a CPAP, a nebulizer, or any other powered medical device, this is non-negotiable. Know the wattage, plan for it. Obviously, it's not optional. Now here's what you do not need to run during the one-week outage. The TV, your PS5, the microwave hair dryer, and air conditioning. I know nobody wants to hear they can't play their video games and run their AC during this week, but we're talking about survival for this one week, not creature comforts. You can be uncomfortable for one week. You cannot go without water, communication, or medication in some cases for that same period of time. So your critical daily load for a family of four is roughly 1.5 to 3 kilowatt hours per day. That's phone, lights, a fan or two, and cycling the fridge. So keep that number in your head because everything we talk about next is built upon that number.
All right, method number one: power banks and batteries. Approximate cost $75 to $200, no fuel, no generator, no noise. Now, this is the no-cook equivalent to what we did with the food episode. This method does not run your fridge. Let me say this up front. If your primary concern is keeping the fridge cold, skip to method two. But if your primary concern is communication, light, and basic comfort, this method covers you for a full week and is relatively inexpensive. So here's the shopping list for running power banks and batteries. Two power banks, 20,000 to 30,000 milliamps each. Between $25 and $50 a piece, the prices vary. A single $20,000 milliamp battery bank will fully charge your phone three to four times. Two of these will keep your phone charged for a full week with a little room to spare. Look for ones with multiple USB ports and at least one with a USB-C outlet. Anchor makes solid budget options. All of my battery banks happen to be made by Anchor. A set of LED lanterns, so let's go with the four-pack. Between $25 and $30 for the four-pack. Collapsible lanterns are popular. They run on three AA batteries, last 50 hours, give or take, and put out enough light to fill up a room. At about $5 a lantern, you can scatter them throughout the house and everybody has light. Stock up on AA batteries. You can get those on sale, Amazon, look around. They're not that expensive. A battery-powered fan or two, depending on what you get, $15 up to $45, $50. A small rechargeable desk fan will run 8 to 24 hours depending on the speed that you set it on. There's all sorts of great brands out there that run you between $25 and $30, somewhere in the mid-range. And again, in a July power outage, that is the difference between sleeping and not sleeping, having a fan circulating the air. This next one, so a handheld cranker solar radio AMFM and the NOAA channels. I purchased one recently for about $20 off of Amazon. I have it in my get home bag, but you can get them for $15, $20, $40. It really just depends on which one you purchase. So when the cell network goes down or gets congested, a hand crank or solar radio might be your only source for information. Get one with a built-in flashlight and USB port to charge your phone in a pinch. The ones with the hand crank are nice because they never go dead. A small solar panel, and these are very small, 10 to 20 watts, $25 to $50. This is your renewable trickle charger. You hang in the window, you set on the porch, and you plug your power banks into it. It tops off during the day. It is very slow. 10 to 20 watts in direct full sunlight on a perfect cloudless day is not a lot, but remember, we're charging our battery banks, and then we're charging our little rechargeable fans, nothing big. So what you don't get using method number one, your fridge. If the power is out for one week and you're on this method, you are going to lose the food in your fridge and your freezer. That's the trade-off. But if you've done the food episode and you've got the no cook or camp stove supply stored, you're covered in that respect. All right, method number two, the portable power station.
Again, costs vary quite a bit. $200 to $600 for the power station itself, plus the solar panels between $100 and $200 to recharge it. This is the camp stove equivalent to the food episode. More capability, more flexibility, still no fuel to store. A portable power station is basically a large lithium-ion phosphate battery in a box with outlets on it. You charge it before the emergency and then you plug things into it. As simple as that. Some of them have regular wall outlets, USB ports, and 12 volt car ports all in the same unit. For the one week family of four scenario, you want something in the line of 500 to 1000 watt hour range. And this is why. At 500 watt hours, you can run your fridge for about six to eight hours, or charge phones and run fans and lights for about two full days. At the 1000 watt hour version, just basically double that. The key is pairing it with a solar panel you can recharge during the day and draw from it at night. So I'm not going to go into a lot about solar panels, but let's talk about a few different options for the solar generator or solar power station. Ecoflow River 3, about $240. Compact, eight pounds, lithium-ion phosphate battery. It will roughly last 3,000 full cycles, completely charged to completely discharge. That's considered one cycle. It's good for phones, lights, fans, laptop. Not big enough to run a full-size fridge, but it will run a mini fridge or a dorm fridge, as I call them. The Blue Eddie AC70, about $500, 760 watt hours. This hits in the sweet spot for the scenario. It will run and cycle a full-size fridge, run fans, charge everything, and with a 200-watt solar panel paired to it, you can replenish the solar generator to about 60 to 70% on the battery on a good sunny day. The Jackery 1000, about $600, 1,070 watt hours, more than enough to run everything we've talked about, runs a fridge all day with solar input, you keeping it topped off. So briefly about solar panels. For solar panels to pair with these, a 100 and 200 watt folding solar panel, the solar blankets, I guess you can call them, run between 100 and $325. Again, depending on the make and model, prices are all over the place. You set it in the yard or on the porch during the day, you cable it to the station and it recharges. As simple as that. Most stations will go from dead to full in one or two sunny days with a 200-watt solar panel. Again, there's a lot of different factors where you are in the world, what season it is, and you have a clear, unobstructed view of the sky and the sun as it comes over. So the advantage of this over a generator, no fuel to store, no noise, no exhaust, safe to use indoors. The disadvantage, if you get several overcast days in a row, your recharge slows down significantly. And you can't run heavy loads like an air conditioner or a well pump with any of these solar generators I just mentioned. Check Amazon, Prime Day, Black Friday. A lot of them have these sales that go on 20 to 40% off easy, some even more. And like I said before, if you're not in a rush, put it in your Amazon cart, do the save for later, and watch it on that website, Camel Camel, Camel. Same thing I mentioned in the water episode. All right, here's the big one. Method
three, the portable generator. And I'll be brief because I've done several podcasts on the portable generators. Approximate cost for this one-week version, we're not going big here, between $400 and $1,000 plus fuel. So this is the bucket method equivalent. It's the full solution, it'll run everything you need and then some. But it requires fuel, maintenance, and some knowledge how to run it safely. So for a family of four running essentials for one week, you want a dual fuel or a tri-fuel inverter generator in the 2,000 to 4,000 watt range. Dual fuel means it runs on gasoline and propane. Tri-fuel, just add in natural gas. The advantage of propane and natural gas is they don't go bad in storage the way gasoline does. Here's just a couple quick versions. The WEN DF235, WEN DF235, between 400 and $600. Dual fuel inverter 2300 watts peak, it's very quiet. The Champion 4750 watt dual fuel, again, about $600. The Westinghouse I Gen 5000, between $700 and $900, $5000 watts peak dual fuel, very quiet for its size. To connect it to your stuff, you need lots of extension cords and the right extension cords. Heavy duty, outdoor rated, 10 or 12 gauge cords. Run them from the generator through a window, a door to the fridge, to the fan, to a power strip for charging. You're not going to tie this into your breaker panel. We're just running cords for the week. It's very simple. If you want to get fancier later, you can hire an electrician to install a transfer switch, an interlock, but that's a future upgrade, and that's beyond what we're talking about today. Let's talk about fuel storage and fuel safety. So if you're going the generator route, fuel storage is your version of water rotation. Same discipline, different
substance. So let's get into this. Gasoline. Now, for the one week, we're storing 10 to 15 gallons minimum for a one-week supply. A 2000-watt generator at half load burns about a half a gallon to one gallon per hour. So we do not run our generators 24-7. We run it in blocks, which we'll talk about here in just a second. Two or three hours in the morning, two or three hours in the evening. That stretches are 10 to 15 gallons across the full seven days. Storing your fuel for long periods of time, use what they call stabil STA hyphen B I L or some other similar fuel stabilizer. When you treat the fuel, when you treat the gasoline, it's good for about 12 months. Write the date on the can with a Sharpie. When you fill it, that's your rotation reminder. We're gonna rotate it just like our water. Every six months to a year, pour the stored gas into your car or your lawnmower, refill the cans with fresh gas, treat it, label it, rinse and repeat. So how to tell if your gas has gone bad? This is something I didn't know until I did the research for this. Color and smell. Fresh gas is clearish with a slight amber tint. Old gas is darker, sometimes almost orange. The smell goes from sharp and chemical to sour and like a varnish-like smell. If it looks dark and it smells off, it is not going to run well, regardless of what you put it in. Your car, your lawnmower, or your generator. Where you store your fuel matters. Keep gas cans in a well-ventilated area, a shed, a detached garage, or outside undercover, not in your house, not in a detached garage if you can avoid it. Avoid direct sunlight. Propane. Propane does not go bad. That's the single biggest advantage of having a dual fuel generator. The 20-pound propane tanks that most people here in the States use for their grill sits in your garage on your back deck for years, and it works just like the first day you purchased it. No rotation, no treatment, no degradation. Buy it and forget it until you need it. Have at least two or three of those 20-pound tanks on hand. Check the dates on your tanks. Now, if you've had them for years, technically the tanks are good for 12 years from the manufacture date. They need to get inspected and requalified. Something I don't think we really have to worry about unless there's something wrong with the cylinder itself. Storane cylinders outdoors and upright, not in your house, not a closed-in garage, not on their side. If it leaks, it'll pool on the floor and could ignite from a spark from in your garage. Keep the tanks upright, valve closed, dust cap on. That's also very important. Outside or in a shaded area. I've talked about this a hundred times, but I'll say it again. Never run a generator indoors or in an attached garage. Carbon monoxide kills every single year. People die from generator exhaust during power outages. Odorless, colorless, don't do it. Resist the temptation, put it outside, grab one of your 50-foot or your 100-foot extension cords, you're good to go. So we've covered the three methods. Before I talk about scheduling your power usage, here's some of the things that people get wrong. Buying a generator and never starting it. Number one mistake. People
buy a generator, put it in the garage, they don't touch it for two years. Power goes out, they go to start it, and it won't turn over because the gas is bad, it's varnished, the carb is gummed up, the oil is stale. So if you own a generator, start it once per month. That's what I try to do at least every other month. I don't do it every month, but I should do it every month. I do it every other month. Start the generator, run it for a few minutes, make sure everything is working correctly, shut it off, put the cover back on, and I put it back in storage. And we did the math earlier, but not knowing the wattage of what you want to run. I cannot tell you how many people that I've talked to that bought a 2000-watt generator and tried to plug in a 15,000 BTU window AC unit, it is not going to work. You are going to trip the breakers. Window AC draws between 1300 and 1900 watts. Your fridge might spike to 800 to 1200 watt when the compressor kicks in. That's the startup surge. That's what you really have to take into consideration. If something steadily runs at 600 watts, when it starts up, it may go to 900 or 1000. So if your generator cannot handle a 1,000 watt load, it is not going to power this device. That device is not going to be able to turn on. Buying the cheapest power bank off Amazon is not the way to go. Those $12, 50,000 milliamp power banks that you've never heard of, skip it, spend a few extra dollars and get to 10,000 or the 20,000 milliamps that I spoke about a few minutes ago. Spend the extra money to get something that works. Storing gas without stabilizer, that's non-negotiable. You don't know how long it's going to be there. Put it in your storage tanks, put it in your jerry cans, and treat it. If you happen to use it a week after you treat it, no harm, no foul. That's what it's there for. The gas treatment does not alter the way the gas performs in your generator. Running a generator 24-7 and burning through all your fuel in two days, that is not good. You don't need it running around the clock. We're going to run the generator and keep the fridge cold, and then we're going to cycle the generator. We're going to turn it off. While the generator is running, we're going to plug in our phones, we're going to plug in our laptops, we're going to use this time to charge as many items as we can. So you can schedule this, write it down on a piece of paper if you want, but you need to make sure you do not run that thing 24-7. I mentioned extension cords. Don't get the little thin indoor lamp cords that are not rated for larger appliances. The 10 gauge or 12 gauge, outdoor rated, heavy-duty cords is what you need. If the cord is warm to the touch while you're running the load, it's undersized and that's a potential fire risk. Buy the right ones. And a few minutes ago, I talked about the surge watts. Every motor driven appliance, fridge, freezer, fan, sump, pump, draw significantly more power at Start up than it does when it runs. A fridge that runs 150 watts might surge to 800 or 1200 for a split second when the compressor kicks on. Now the scheduling. Run it in blocks, not 24-7. Whether you're on a power station, a generator, the key principle for making your power last that full week, remember we're
talking about the week, is not to run it continuously. Run it in blocks. Morning block, two to three hours. Run the fridge, get it cold, charge all your phones, power banks, power stations. If you have one, fill your water bottles from the fridge, and then turn it off. Afternoon, everything off. Solar panel charges the power station or power banks passively, the fridge stays closed. It'll hold temperature four to six hours if you don't open it. Evening block, two to three hours. Run the fridge again, run fans, run lights while the family is up. Charge everything that's getting low. Overnight, battery fans on low, LED lanterns as needed. Everything else is off. Using this method, a generator that would burn through those 15 gallons in three days running nonstop, you are able to stretch that to the full seven days. Same with your power station. Paired with solar, you use it in blocks. 5,000 to 1,000 watt-hour solar generator can run you indefinitely as long as you're getting sun. The fridge is a discipline piece. Every time you open the fridge, you let the cold air out. The compressor has to work harder when it cycles back on. In a power outage, treat your fridge like an airlock. Know what's in there before you open it, know where it is, open the door, grab it, get it out, and close the door. Now, if this happens in January, which would be winter here in the United States, well, I'm recording this in July, obviously, and what we talked about is framed
around a summer outage. But I want to spend a minute just on winter because the math changes completely. In the summer, your enemy is heat, and your critical loads are fans, the fridge, communication. In winter, your enemy is the cold and your critical load becomes heat. So here's the problem with electric space heaters. They draw 1500 watts. That's more than anything else that we've talked about combined. A small 2000-watt generator can run one space heater and nothing else. Your power station, a 1000-watt hour power station, will run a space heater for about 40 minutes. That's it. So if your threat model includes winter outages, you need to shift your plans. Propane or kerosene space heater that does not require electricity. The Mr. Buddy propane heaters that I talked about are very popular here in the States, very popular among preppers, but they run on those small propane canisters. They can also run on the 20-pound cylinders with the right adapter. Technically, they can be used indoors, but make sure you crack a window, make sure there's ventilation. But be on the safe side, ventilation and a CO detector in that room. In the winter, your fridge becomes less of a priority. If it's 20 degrees outside, your front porch or your deck is now going to be your fridge. You put your beer, your milk, your butter, put everything out there into snow or out there on the deck, and there's your fridge. Power going out in the winter, frozen pipes. I've been there and it sucks. A winter outage means no heat, which means frozen pipes, which means burst pipes, which means it's going to suck. Water damage when the power comes back on. If you're in a climate where there's a risk, keeping one space heater running in that area where your pipes are most vulnerable, usually the basement or a crawl space. The first time this happened to me, when spring came along, I got underneath the house and I insulated my pipes. I have an older home. They are copper, they are not PVC. So I use that foam and wrapped it around those copper pipes. Sleeping bags and layering. Doesn't cost you any watts to sweatpants, sweatshirt, t-shirt, and a nice sleeping bag. One room, door closed, blankets over the doorways, sleeping bags, keep your body heat in. That's how people survive before central heating even existed. So for the winter, your power goes to one or two critical things: a heater for the pipes if needed, lighting communications. Everything else you solve with non-electric methods, propane heaters, sleeping bags, and moving your food outside. So scaling up, the same thing I said in the food episode applies here. Once you have a wheat covered, it's easy to expand. For power, this is what
scaling up looks like. Add a second power station, a lot of you can daisy chain together or a larger solar panel. Get a couple more propane tanks. Add a bigger generator. Down the road, you may want to wire any transfer switch so you can power specific circuits in your home without running extension cords everywhere. So I've done a previous episode on solar setups and generators. Go back in the catalog and you'll be able to find those as well. But for this series, building your arc, the goal is one week. Any of these three methods will get you there. So to wrap this up, we have three simple, realistic methods to keep our family powered for one week: power banks and batteries, portable power station with solar, or a dual fuel generator with stored fuel. Same as the other episodes. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. A $25 power bank and a four-pack of LED lanterns is infinitely better than having nothing when the lights go out. I've said it before. Start small and add as you're able to. If you're already set on power, do an inventory this week. Are your power banks charged? Is your fuel fresh? Which reminds me, I did not start my generator. We're in mid-July. I started my generator back in May. So I need to take my own advice and get out there this weekend and fire up my generator. Make sure it runs, check the date on your gas cans, check the dates on your propane tanks. The stuff maybe takes 15 minutes tops, and it means the difference between being prepared, meaning having power, and not. When the power goes out and you realize that your gas is stale for your generator, that's the worst possible scenario. So we've covered water, security, food, and now power. Those are our four tenets for building your arc. Folks, thank you so much for stopping by as always. If you need to reach out, practical prep podcast at gmail.com. As always, be careful out there. Take care of one another. And until next time.
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