How many days can I boondock on a 5,500Wh power station?

Answered by RV Parts Giant · Upland, CA · October 15, 2026

Short answer: About ten days for a rig with a 12V fridge, lights, pump, phones and fans (550Wh a day), with no charging at all. A CPAP brings it to about seven days, a Standard Starlink dish to about five, and eight warm hours of a rooftop AC to under one night. Add 400W of panel and the lighter rigs never run it down.

The station is the easy half of the sum. The other half is what your rig uses in a day, and that swings more than most people expect. The figures below use our calculator's daily allowances and the BLUETTI Apex 300 + B300K, the station the calculator most often lands on at this size, rated at 5,529Wh. They assume no charging at all, so they are the worst case.

Days with no charging

What the rig runs	Per day	Days on 5,529Wh
Propane fridge, lights, pump, phones, fans	about 270Wh	about 20
12V compressor fridge plus the basics above	about 550Wh	about 10
... plus a furnace or diesel heater fan at night	about 680Wh	about 8
... plus a CPAP, no humidifier	about 740Wh	about 7
... plus a Starlink Mini on most of the day	about 805Wh	about 7
... plus a CPAP with the heated humidifier	about 935Wh	about 6
... plus a Standard Starlink dish on most of the day	about 1,125Wh	about 5
Fridge, TV, laptop, Standard dish, furnace, CPAP + humidifier, coffee	about 1,920Wh	about 3
12V fridge plus a 13,500 BTU rooftop AC for 8 warm hours	about 7,250Wh	under 1

Each "plus" row adds that one load to the 12V-fridge rig. Stack several and add their extras together: a CPAP and a Mini, for example, comes to about 1,000Wh a day, or five and a half days.

The 12V fridge is the load that sets the baseline. Swap it for a propane fridge and the station lasts twice as long, because the absorption fridge only draws for its controls.

With solar, the answer changes shape

Once panels go in, the question stops being "how many days" and becomes "does the panel put back what I use". The calculator credits 75% of a panel's rating across the sun hours you get:

Panel	Mixed sun, about 5 hours	Cloudy or winter, about 3 hours
200W	about 750Wh a day	about 450Wh a day
400W	about 1,500Wh a day	about 900Wh a day

So a 400W folding blanket in mixed sun more than covers every row in the table except the everything-on rig and the rooftop AC, and the station only runs down on cloudy days. In winter sun the same 400W covers a CPAP rig but not a Standard dish, and the station slowly drains instead of sitting full.

If your stays run past a week with heavy loads, the Apex 300 + 2x B300K holds 8,294Wh, about 50% more days on every row above.

Put in your own loads, days and sun in our RV solar & battery calculator. It sizes the station and the panel together.