Solar panels can keep a fridge going through an outage, but not by themselves. The panel refills a battery during the day; the battery runs the fridge around the clock. The question is whether your panels can put back each day what the fridge takes out.
Step 1: Find your fridge’s daily use
Look at the yellow EnergyGuide label or the model’s spec sheet for estimated yearly electricity use in kWh, then divide by 365. As an example, the Department of Energy’s Building America program shows a fridge label reading 630 kWh a year, which is about 1.7 kWh a day. Older or larger fridges can use more, so check yours.
Step 2: Estimate what your panels make
Multiply panel watts by your area’s peak sun hours, then take off about 14% for losses, the default in NREL’s PVWatts calculator. In a 4-sun-hour location, a 200W panel makes about 690Wh a day, and 400W makes about 1,380Wh.
Step 3: Compare
Using that 1.7 kWh example, you’d need roughly 500W of panels on a clear day in a 4-sun-hour area just to break even, and more to allow for cloudy days or anything else you plug in. That’s three 200W folders, a 350W BLUETTI PV350 plus a 200W folder, or five rigid 100W panels.
Step 4: Make sure the battery covers the night
The power station has to hold enough to carry the fridge from late afternoon to mid-morning, plus a cushion for a gray day. That’s why pairing solar with a 2kWh-class unit like the BLUETTI Elite 200 V2 or Jackery HomePower 2000 Plus v2 makes more sense for fridge backup than a small 500Wh station.
Also confirm your power station can handle your fridge’s startup surge, and check that your panels fit its solar input limits before you buy.
Want to see how much a panel would refill your battery during an outage? Our Whole-Home Energy Calculator lets you pick a panel and a power station, then shows the daily refill, how long your essentials would run and which cable the pair needs.