How to Power Your CPAP Machine While Camping
If you depend on a CPAP machine for a peaceful night's sleep, having a backup source of electricity is essential to for power outages or trips away from home. With today’s many options available, there is no reason to fear a bad night’s sleep during a weekend adventure due to a loss of power. If you want to go camping, there are a few portable power supply options to guarantee sustained power for your CPAP machine. You can either:
- Visit a Campsite with Electricity Hook-Ups
- Power Your CPAP with you Car’s Battery
- Or Use a Portable Power Station
Some campsites have electricity available in both tent and RV spaces, however, this comes at a premium cost, limits your options, and does not guarantee a lack of surges or blackouts. You can also power your CPAP with your car’s battery, but doing so may require a special adapter and could potentially cause you to drain your entire vehicle's power, leaving you camping for much longer than you had intended. In both of these cases, you are also always going to be constrained to camping as far as your extension cord can reach from your car or your campsite’s power outlets.
For all of these reasons, the best CPAP battery options to power a CPAP machine while camping is to use a portable power station. A portable power station can deliver silent electric power only limited to how far you are willing to carry it. Widely known as solar generators, these work great as a cpap battery for camping since they can be recharged with solar panels and/or AC wall outlet and have big enough batteries that they can power more than just your CPAP machine.
According to most CPAP machine websites, the average CPAP machine uses between 30-60 watts of power and requires a minimum 175-watt inverter, but it's always best to check your specific unit for this number.
CPAP Machine AMP Draw
To find this we'll want to do Watts/volts=amp draw. So for a 30 Watts or 60 Watts machine, the calculation would be:
- 30 Watts/12 Volts = 2.75 amps from the battery.
- 60 Watts/12 Volts = 5.5 amp draw
In this article, we will showcase the 2 best solar power generators that can power your CPAP machine while camping.
The EASYLONGER GP50 - CPAP 297.6Wh 96000mAh Power Station has been specifically designed for powering CPAP Machines, which is why it’s compatible with a wide variety of them: Resmed Airsense/Aircurve 10, Resmed S9, Dreamstation, System one, HDM Z1(12V only), Transcend Mini, Airmini.
With a listed capacity of 96000mAh/297.6Wh, you can expect anywhere between 35 to 50 hours of continuous power or the equivalent of 5-6 nights. Of course, the actual duration can vary according to your actual CPAP machine power consumption.
It can be charged via a regular wall outlet, or even using a DC car plug, but in this case, you’d need a DC to AC converted, which is not included with the product. Furthermore, it should be noted that due to the high capacity this backup battery cannot be taken on planes, as it exceeds the 100Wh limit imposed by the FAA and TSA.
