Backup Power for Home Medical Equipment: CPAP, Oxygen, and Life-Support Planning
How to back up CPAP machines, oxygen concentrators, and home medical equipment: battery bridges, generator sizing, utility registration, and Project LifeLine.
For households running oxygen concentrators, CPAP/BiPAP machines, home dialysis, powered wheelchairs, or refrigerated medications, a power outage is a medical event. This guide is the planning framework we use, and it's the mission behind our Project LifeLine program for low-income medically fragile households.
The two-layer strategy
Layer one is a battery bridge at the device: an EcoFlow-class power station sized to the equipment's draw (a CPAP pulls 30 to 60W without humidification; oxygen concentrators 300 to 600W) buys hours instantly and silently, indoors, the moment power drops. Layer two is whole-home standby power for outages measured in days: a natural gas generator that also keeps the furnace, refrigeration for medications, and lighting alive.
Sizing for medical loads
Get the nameplate watts off each device (or text us a photo of the label), add refrigeration if medications need it, and size the bridge battery for your realistic overnight hours. On the generator side, medical loads are usually small; it's the rest of the house (heat, A/C for heat-sensitive conditions) that sets the size. We do this sizing free.
Register, document, and Project LifeLine
Register with your utility as a medical-needs customer (it affects restoration priority and disconnection protections), keep a printed plan for caregivers, and test the bridge quarterly. And if cost is the barrier: Project LifeLine is our 501(c)(3) initiative to put backup power into low-income homes that depend on electricity-powered medical equipment; details are on our Project LifeLine page.
Quick Answers
What size battery runs a CPAP overnight?
A CPAP without humidification draws 30 to 60W, so a 500Wh power station covers a full night with margin; with heated humidification, plan 2 to 3x that. We'll size it from your device model.
Will a generator power an oxygen concentrator?
Easily: concentrators draw 300 to 600W. The planning point is automatic start (standby, not portable) so power returns in seconds even when nobody can go outside to pull a cord.
What is Project LifeLine?
Our nonprofit program providing backup power solutions for low-income, medically fragile residents who depend on electricity-powered home medical equipment, funded through institutional partners and donations. See the Project LifeLine page on this site to apply or support it.