Battery Backup Lab is an independent site for home backup power in the US and Canada. We publish the numbers brands won't: real running watts, real starting surges, and sizing math that accounts for both.
One tool is live today; it's the foundation everything else on this site is built on.
Search 100+ household appliances, see running AND starting watts, then tick your outage list — we compute the true peak you need, using the same method professional generator sizers use.
A sump pump that "draws 1,000 W" demands ~2,300 W for half a second at start. Charts that skip starting watts size you into a flooded basement. Ours never does.
Every figure traces to DOE tables, manufacturer spec sheets, or published sizing charts — with honest ranges, because your fridge and your neighbour's aren't the same fridge.
We read the reviews before we wrote a single page. Owners of home backup gear keep hitting the same walls: batteries that quietly drain themselves while waiting for an outage, units that fail to switch over at the exact moment they were bought for, spec sheets whose promises shrink under a real motor load, and support queues that go silent when it matters. Meanwhile, the big publishers write listicles and the brands write "calculators" that only recommend their own products.
Our answer is boring and effective: measured data and honest math, presented so you can decide in minutes. It starts with the wattage database — the two numbers per appliance that every backup-power decision depends on, and the sizing method that respects both.