How this works

Watts (W) measure how much power your system is drawing at one moment. Watt-hours (Wh) measure how much stored energy a battery has. A power station with a 2,000 Wh battery running a 500 W load delivers roughly four hours of runtime before losses.

A speaker rated at "1,000 W" is describing peak amplifier output, not the wall draw of the system. Real measured power at the outlet is almost always far lower than the sum of nameplate ratings on your gear.

For the most accurate result, measure your system during normal use with an inline watt meter and enter that value. Idle measurements tend to understate real performance draw.

Runtime is approximately battery Wh × usable factor / load watts. The usable factor accounts for inverter overhead and the portion of the battery you can safely discharge. We use 0.85 as a sensible default.

We only recommend specific models that Performance Carts has vetted and added to our database. No outside product listings, scraped specs, or shopping results are used. If nothing in our database matches, the tool tells you that directly and still shows the numerical requirements.

Confidence describes the quality of the information used for the estimate, not whether the result is favorable. Measured system draw is usually stronger than category assumptions or custom estimates. Equipment selected from verified database records is stronger than unverified custom entries. Low or incomplete confidence means the app is missing important information or the inputs are too uncertain to treat as a dependable estimate.

For the most accurate result, measure your system during normal use and update the estimate.

Centralized Power sizes one station for everything entered. Distributed Power splits the setup into zones and sizes each zone separately. This is useful for full front ensembles, separate speaker stacks, mixer carts, synth carts, wireless racks, and other physically separated gear.