What runs your fridge at night? Three battery paths

The short version: a plug-in kit cannot run your fridge at night, and it shuts off in a blackout. The power has to go into a battery first. There are three ways to do that, and the one that keeps your fridge cold in an outage with no electrician is the simplest: plug the fridge into a portable power station and charge the station with its own panels.

Size it from your fridge’s label

Every new US fridge carries a yellow EnergyGuide label with an estimated yearly energy use in kWh. Divide it by 365 for a daily figure. For example, a label reading 500 kWh a year works out to about 1.37 kWh a day. That example is a made-up number for the math, not a typical fridge; use your own label.

Then use the fridge battery calculator. Enter your daily kWh, how many hours you need, and anything else you will run. It adds inverter loss and a reserve so you do not drain the battery flat.

The three paths

1. Power station

The fridge plugs into the station, not the wall, so nothing feeds your house wiring. Anker lists the SOLIX F3800 Plus at 3,840 Wh, with two solar inputs of up to 1,600 W each and expansion batteries of 3.84 kWh each. It also charges from a wall outlet at up to 1,800 W.

The trade-off is weight and wiring: Anker lists it at 136.7 lb, and only what is plugged into it is backed up.

2. Plug-in battery

This is a battery that sits between your panels and your outlet, storing midday sun and feeding it back in the evening. EcoFlow lists the STREAM Ultra at 1.92 kWh, rated at 800 W at the grid terminal, with anti-islanding protection. Anti-islanding means it stops feeding your outlets when the grid fails, the same as a plain kit. We could not confirm from EcoFlow’s page whether it has its own outlets for blackout use, so we mark that not verified.

Where you may install it is a moving target. EcoFlow’s US store Q&A says self-install is available in Utah only, while its global page says Utah, Maryland and Colorado. TechRadar’s IFA 2026 coverage reports that grid-tied plug-in batteries need professional installation in the US. Check your state’s law and EcoFlow’s current page before you buy.

3. Whole-home battery

A battery wired into your panel through a transfer switch, so it powers chosen circuits, or the whole house, while cut off from the grid. Anker describes its SOLIX E10 as supporting 6 to 90 kWh with a 200 A Power Dock. This is the most capable path and the most expensive, and an electrician installs it.

Never backfeed the house

Do not plug any battery, power station or generator into a wall outlet to power your house in an outage. That bypasses every protection in is plug-in solar safe and can energize the grid.