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⚡ Hurricane-Season Backup Planner

How long will a battery power your house in an outage?

Pick the things you need to keep running when the grid goes down in Southwest Florida — and see exactly how many hours (or days) a Tesla Powerwall or home battery keeps them on.

1Your battery + location

2What do you need to keep running?

Recharge from rooftop solar during the day ☀️
A solar system refills the battery each day — often making backup last indefinitely.
We'll tell you how many batteries hit that goal.
Runtime on a single charge
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Usable battery capacity
0 kWh
Your daily power useselected appliances
0 kWh/day
Batteries for 3-day goal
0
Inverter power neededcontinuous / surge
0 / 0 kW

Get your exact hurricane-backup design

We'll size a battery system for your home and roof — free, no pressure.

✓ Thanks! A Higher Power Solar advisor will reach out with your custom backup plan.
Estimates are for planning only and depend on real appliance loads, battery condition, and weather. Powerwall® is a trademark of Tesla, Inc. Prefer to talk now? Call (941) 830-4937.

How the backup runtime is calculated

Runtime depends on three things: how much usable energy your batteries hold (kWh), how much power your home draws each day (kWh/day), and whether solar recharges the battery during daylight. Air conditioning is almost always the biggest factor in Florida — a central AC can use more energy than everything else in your house combined, which is why "essentials only" backup lasts days while "whole-home with AC" often lasts hours.

How long will one Tesla Powerwall run my house?
A single Powerwall 3 holds about 13.5 kWh of usable energy. Running just essentials (refrigerator, lights, Wi-Fi, phones, a few fans) at roughly 5–6 kWh/day, one Powerwall lasts about 2–2.5 days. Backing up a whole home including central AC (~35 kWh/day) drops that to roughly 7–10 hours. Add rooftop solar and it recharges every day — often keeping essentials running indefinitely.
How many batteries do I need for a hurricane?
For a multi-day outage, most Southwest Florida homes want 2–3 batteries to keep essentials plus some cooling running, or pair one to two batteries with solar so the system refills daily. Use the calculator above to match your exact appliances to a 1–7 day goal.
Will solar keep my battery charged during an outage?
Yes — if your solar is set up for backup, it recharges the battery during daylight. When your panels make more energy per day than your home uses, your backup can last indefinitely. Cloudy hurricane days produce less, which is why a battery buffer still matters.
Can a battery run my air conditioner?
Yes, but AC is the heaviest load. A central AC needs roughly 3–5 kW running and can surge to 8–12 kW on startup, so you need enough inverter power and enough stored energy. Many homeowners back up a single room AC or the whole home for shorter windows, and rely on solar to stretch it. See our battery backup options →