Looking to buy a power station on the uk. Don’t want to break the bank just to run a cooler for 2-3 nights. Also to charge some phones and iPads. Any recommendations would be great also what coolers are best.
By 'cooler' I take it you mean Coolbox or Fridge for food storage. If so, then for a powered one, there is only one type suitable for prolonged running from a battery source, and that's a compressor type. The other options of Peltier/Thermoelectric, or the older tech Absorption types consume far too much power and will only run for mere hours before flattening a sensible sized battery!
Also Peltier/Thermoelectric types only cool to around 16-18C below ambient (which on a 30C plus day as we've been having recently means it'll only store contents at circa 15C!), which is not good enough for safe storage of perishable food (needs to be stored at 0-4C), but may be adequate for chilled drinks.
An alternative for only a few days use, may be one of the higher end high quality passive coolboxes like Igloo, Icytek etc. and loading it with ice. The cheap common 'picnic' coolboxes generally don't have good enough insulation to keep ice frozen for days, but the high end ones do.
As to powering a Coolbox/Fridge from a 'powerstation', well that's very much 'how long is a piece of string' type question!!!!!
It depends on a LOT of variables (which we certainly can't know, and likely you will not without trial and error from practical experience of any given set up!), like power consumption of the Coolbox/Fridge, ambient temps which determine how hard it has to work (inside a tent with the sun on it can easily reach into 40C PLUS! - it'll run flat out without tripping in and out on the thermostat!), how often it's opened and 'warm air' allowed in, whether or not 'non-chilled' items are added after it's had it's initial chill down etc.
The best answer possible is that, yes you can run one for a few days under the right conditions, but in the wrong conditions you may only achieve one day! People looking to run that kind of setup often include a Solar Panel to recharge the Powerbank daily.
I'm afraid, a compressor fridge plus suitable powerbank plus solar panel reaches into many people's idea of 'breaking the bank'! High hundreds of pounds as a minimum! If going for budget friendly, then a passive coolbox packed with ice, whilst still not 'dirt cheap' is a lot more economical than any powered option, and can be 'revitalised' by simply adding new ice. Many campsites offer a 'icepack' refreezing service, which may help.
Phones and iPads should last a day or so on inbuilt batteries (depending on use!!!), and a smallish 'pocket sized' power pack should see you through 3 days.
As a Realtime Example, I have An Anker Everfrost 40 Litre (1st generation) which comes with a 300W battery and an Anker F2000 PowerStaion (also first Gen) I had my Fridge Running in the Car from 5pm Sunday until 9pm Tuesday, Running from the F2000, rather than the Fridge Battery, and it used about 40% of the Battery (about 800w) This was a Reasonable fully Fridge, opening half a dozen times, Set at 0 Degrees.
what I did Find when running the Fridge in the Tent, when the Ambient teperature was 40 Degrees, the Fridge Batteries got to too Hot to charge, so Ended up Swapping the Fridge Batteries twice a day, and Charging them outside of the fridge when they cooled down.
Building on Monty15's point that a compressor box is the only sensible powered option — here's a way to turn that "piece of string" into a number you can budget against.
A 40L compressor coolbox pulls roughly 45W, but only while the compressor is actually cycling — on a mild UK trip maybe a third of the time — so reckon ~250–400Wh a day. That makes a 500Wh station really only a night and a half; for a genuine 2–3 nights without recharging you want around 1kWh, ideally LiFePO4 cells so it lasts for years.
One tip nobody's mentioned: run the coolbox from the station's 12V DC socket, not the 230V inverter — a coolbox is natively 12V, so you skip the inverter's conversion loss and stretch the battery further.
For 2–3 nights on a budget, though, I'd split the two jobs: a well-insulated passive box with block ice (lasts far longer than cubes), pre-chilled and kept shut and shaded, holds food fine for that long — then just a small USB power bank for the phones and iPads. Much cheaper than fridge-plus-solar.
Happy to rough out sizing for a specific coolbox if that helps.
A day of all things motorhome and campervan. The show is held both in the main indoor arena and across the grounds. Catering, hot drinks and food options are available. Easy access to the site and free parking included. Win one of five pairs of day tickets
Topic: Camping power station
via mobile 19/7/2026 at 8:46pm
