Battery backup for an oxygen concentrator

Start here, before any product. If someone in your household uses an oxygen concentrator, the first two calls are to the durable medical equipment supplier and prescriber who manage that device, and to your electric utility about its medical or life-support program. This page does not give medical advice, does not tell you that a battery makes anyone safe, and cannot tell you whether a given concentrator tolerates running from a power station. What it does is the sizing arithmetic, from manufacturer-published draw figures, so that the conversation with those two parties starts with real numbers instead of a guess. We have not tested any of these products, and the Amazon links above are affiliate links, disclosed at the top of this page.

Ready.gov's own preparation guidance points in the same direction, and it is worth quoting before any arithmetic: "Talk to your medical provider about a power outage plan for medical devices powered by electricity and refrigerated medicines. Find out how long medication can be stored at higher temperatures and get specific guidance for any medications that are critical for life." Its power outage tips also instruct households to "Have alternate plans for refrigerating medicines or using power-dependent medical devices."

What the makers publish

Sizing goes wrong when it starts from a category average, because the published spread across real products is roughly six to one. These are manufacturer-published figures for named models, read on August 19, 2026, quoted with their published basis.

Inogen At Home, stationary, continuous flow. Inogen's product page publishes the power settings as "AC Power Supply, 100-240V, 275W, 50-60Hz" with the note "Only 100W on Flow Setting 2" and "(auto sensing to allow worldwide use)". It publishes five continuous flow settings from 1 to 5, delivering up to 5 litres per minute, an oxygen concentration of 87 to 96 percent across that range, a 45 dBA operating volume at flow setting 2, and a net weight of 18 lbs.

CAIRE NewLife Elite, stationary, continuous flow. CAIRE's specification table publishes a power draw of 350 watts, flow rates of 1.0 to 5.0 LPM, a sound level of 48 dB(A), and a weight of 54 lb.

CAIRE NewLife Intensity 8, stationary, high flow. Power draw 410 watts, flow rates 2.0 to 8.0 LPM, sound level 52 dB(A), 20 psig outlet pressure.

CAIRE NewLife Intensity 10, stationary, high flow. Power draw 590 watts, flow rates 2.0 to 10.0 LPM, sound level 55 dB(A), weight 58 lb.

Inogen Rove 6, portable, pulse dose. Inogen publishes the power settings as "AC Power Supply 100-240V, 50-60Hz (auto sensing to allow worldwide use)" and a DC power option for mobile use, and publishes no watt figure at all. It publishes six pulse-dose settings, battery runtime of up to 6 hours 15 minutes on the standard battery and up to 12 hours 45 minutes on the extended battery, both at flow setting 1, recharge times of up to 3 hours and up to 4 hours respectively, and a noise level of 39 dBA at flow setting 2. Inogen states that the Rove 6 replaces the Inogen One G5.

Two patterns are worth naming. First, flow setting drives everything. Inogen's own two figures for the same appliance, 275 W as the supply rating and 100 W at flow setting 2, differ by nearly a factor of three, and CAIRE's own range from a 5 LPM unit to a 10 LPM unit is 350 W to 590 W. A prescription change moves the sizing answer more than a product change does.

Second, nobody publishes a startup or inrush figure. Concentrators use compressors, and a compressor draws more at the instant it starts than while running, but none of the makers above publishes a locked rotor or surge number for these devices. None publishes a tolerance for transfer time either. Both gaps are questions for the device maker, not for us to fill in.

Our medical equipment guide carries published figures for other makers and device categories, including power wheelchair chargers and home dialysis, and records where the public specifications run out entirely.

The arithmetic

Two steps, both with the assumption written down.

Step one: derate the battery. Rated watt hours are stored energy, not delivered energy, and inverter conversion loses some of it. None of the power station makers publishes a single household efficiency figure for this kind of load, so this guide assumes 85 percent throughout and labels it an assumption rather than a specification. Use your own figure if you have a better one.

Step two: divide by watts. Delivered watt hours divided by the device's published watts gives hours.

| Unit | Rated capacity | Delivered at 85 percent | At 100 W | At 275 W | At 350 W | At 590 W |

|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|

| BLUETTI Apex 300 | 2,764.8 Wh | about 2,350 Wh | 23.5 h | 8.5 h | 6.7 h | 4.0 h |

| Anker SOLIX F3800 Plus | 3,840 Wh | about 3,264 Wh | 32.6 h | 11.9 h | 9.3 h | 5.5 h |

| EcoFlow DELTA Pro 3 | 4,096 Wh | about 3,482 Wh | 34.8 h | 12.7 h | 9.9 h | 5.9 h |

| Jackery Explorer 5000 Plus | 5,040 Wh | about 4,284 Wh | 42.8 h | 15.6 h | 12.2 h | 7.3 h |

| EcoFlow DELTA Pro Ultra | 6,144 Wh | about 5,222 Wh | 52.2 h | 19.0 h | 14.9 h | 8.9 h |

The number this arithmetic makes unavoidable

Twenty four hours of continuous concentrator use is the benchmark worth checking against, because that is roughly the length of an ordinary storm outage, and multi-day outages are longer still.

• At 100 W, Inogen's published figure for the At Home at flow setting 2, a day needs about 2,400 Wh delivered, which is about 2,824 Wh of rated capacity under our assumption. The DELTA Pro 3 and everything above it clears that on one charge. The Apex 300 comes close and does not quite reach it.
• At 275 W, Inogen's published supply rating for the same appliance, a day needs about 6,600 Wh delivered, or about 7,765 Wh rated. No single unit on this page covers it.
• At 590 W, CAIRE's published figure for the NewLife Intensity 10, a day needs about 14,160 Wh delivered, or roughly 16,660 Wh rated. That is more than twice the largest single battery here.

So for anything above the lowest flow settings, one box is not a day. Expansion batteries, a second unit, or a recharge path are part of any serious plan rather than optional extras. EcoFlow publishes expansion to 12 kWh on one DELTA Pro 3 and 30 kWh on one DELTA Pro Ultra inverter; Anker publishes expansion up to 53.8 kWh for the F3800 Plus. The recharge route, where a generator runs for a few hours and the battery carries the quiet ones, is covered in our generator pairing guide.

Portable concentrators change the shape of the problem

A portable pulse-dose concentrator already carries a battery, and its maker publishes runtime for it. Inogen publishes up to 6 hours 15 minutes on the standard battery and up to 12 hours 45 minutes on the extended battery for the Rove 6, both at flow setting 1, with recharge times of up to 3 hours and up to 4 hours.

That reframes what a power station is for. Rather than running a concentrator directly for the whole outage, the plan many suppliers describe is a rotation: the device runs on its own batteries, and the power station recharges those batteries and everything else in the house. Charging a 4 hour battery pack draws far less than running a 590 W stationary unit continuously, which is why the arithmetic above is the worst case rather than the only case.

Whether that rotation is appropriate for a given prescription is a clinical question. Ask it of your prescriber and your supplier, not of a specification sheet, and note Inogen's own statement that the Rove 6 "is to be used as an oxygen supplement and is not intended to be life sustaining or life supporting."

Utility medical and life-support programs

Most US utilities run some version of a medical baseline or life-support registry, under names that vary by state. In general they do three things: they may add an allotment of energy at a lower price on your existing rate, they may add outage notifications beyond what other customers receive, and they create a record that someone at the address depends on powered equipment. Enrolling is normally free and normally requires certification by a clinician.

What they generally do not do is guarantee service. The programs we have read state plainly that enrollment does not remove the risk of an outage or a shutoff, and they advise medically dependent customers to keep an emergency plan of their own regardless. Our medical equipment guide works through two named utility programs in detail, including what each one commits to in writing.

Look up your own utility's program by name, read the commitment rather than the summary, and ask specifically whether medically certified customers get any priority in restoration, because the answer differs by utility and by state.

Choosing between the picks

• You want the smallest and quietest unit of this group: the BLUETTI Apex 300 at 2,764.8 Wh, with a published pure sine wave inverter and 6,000 or more cycles to 80 percent, the longest cell life rating of the plug-in units on this page.
• You want a published switchover figure with real capacity: the EcoFlow DELTA Pro 3, at 4,096 Wh and a published 10 ms UPS switchover with no mode qualifier attached.
• You want an online UPS mode published at 0 ms: the Jackery Explorer 5000 Plus or the EcoFlow DELTA Pro Ultra, both of which publish a backup mode under 20 ms and an online mode at 0 ms. Note the Jackery's cycle life floor is published at 70 percent rather than 80 percent.
• You want the most room to expand: the Anker SOLIX F3800 Plus, published as expandable to 53.8 kWh, or the DELTA Pro Ultra at 30 kWh on one inverter.
• You need the longest single-battery runtime: the EcoFlow DELTA Pro Ultra at 6,144 Wh per battery.

The honest limits

Every number on this page is a manufacturer datasheet or product-page claim recorded with its published basis, not a measurement we made, and none of it is a statement about safety. A battery can run out, fail, arrive discharged, or be incompatible with a specific device's power supply. Manufacturers publish UPS switchover ratings for the power station, not compatibility findings for medical equipment. Prices on these products move often, which is one reason we publish none here.

Before buying anything, confirm with your equipment supplier that your device may be run from a power station at all, confirm its actual draw at your prescribed flow setting from the device label or the manufacturer's manual, enroll with your utility's medical or life-support program, and build a plan that does not depend on a single box. If the wider household picture is what you are working on, our medical equipment guide covers other device categories and the CPAP guide covers the other overnight device people ask about most.