The UK Government's Be Ready campaign says "being ready for 3 days helps you manage while support reaches those most in need", whether it is a power cut, a burst main or a storm. This site is that list, item by item, with what to look for when you buy and what to do when it happens.
Items 1 to 7 follow the government list. Where we suggest a product, the search link goes to Amazon UK and is marked as an ad.
What size battery runs what, for how long, and when a big one is worth it.
Water & foodThe government's litres-per-person figure, worked out for your household.
When it happensWho to call, what to switch off, and the free alerts to sign up for today.
The government guide asks for a power bank for your phone and spare batteries for the torch and radio. Everything bigger is optional. Here is how to decide.
About 4 phone charges. £20 to £40. This is what the guide means. Everyone should have one.
Phones, a laptop, a router, a CPAP machine overnight, a few LED lights. £200 to £400.
Adds a fridge-freezer for roughly 8 to 12 hours if you keep the door shut, or a working day at a desk. £500 to £900.
Fridge for a day, a small heater for an hour or two, several devices. £1,000 and up. Only worth it for a long rural outage or medical need.
Watt-hours (Wh) is how much energy the battery holds. Watts (W) is how fast it can give it out. A fridge draws about 100 to 200 W while the compressor runs, but it runs only part of the time, so a 1,000 Wh station lasts longer than the simple division suggests. A kettle draws 2,000 to 3,000 W and will empty a mid-size station in a single boil, so boil water on a camping stove outdoors instead.
Buy a station with a LiFePO4 (lithium iron phosphate) battery rather than older lithium-ion. It lasts around 3,000 charge cycles instead of 500 to 800, which matters for something that will sit for years and be used a handful of times. Recharge it every three months.
A folding 100 to 200 W panel recharges a mid station in a day of decent sun, which in a UK winter is rare. Treat solar as a slow top-up for a multi-day outage, not a way to skip the mains charge.
| Brand | Where to buy | Notes |
|---|
The guide's advice comes first: a backup battery that your equipment's maker specifies, and registering with your electricity supplier's Priority Services Register, which is free and gets you earlier updates and support in a cut. A power station is a second layer, not a substitute. Priority Services Register (thepsr.co.uk)
The guide says: bottled water for 3 days, "3 litres per person per day for drinking. More would be needed for other tasks such as cooking and washing." The calculator also shows 10 litres a day, our own figure for cooking and washing as well.
60 litres with cooking and washing (our estimate). Add more for baby formula, pets and medical devices.
Bottled water is the simplest and the dearest. Sealed food-grade containers of 10 to 20 litres, filled from the tap and refilled every six months (the guide suggests a six-monthly check of the whole kit), cost a few pounds each and stack under a sink or in a wardrobe base. Mark the fill date on the lid. A water filter or purification tablets are a sensible extra for a rural home on a private supply, but for a mains household the stored water is the point.
The guide asks for food with a long shelf life that doesn't need refrigeration or cooking, such as tinned meat, fish or vegetables, dried fruit and nuts, plus pet food. It adds: "It's best to buy food you'd usually eat." Don't buy special "survival" food. Buy a few extra tins of what you already eat each week, keep them together, and rotate them into normal use before the dates. A camping gas stove, used outdoors only, turns tins into hot meals and boils water for tea, which does more for morale than anything else in the kit.
A torch, an in-car phone charger, warm clothes and blankets, high-visibility clothing, jump leads, food and drink, a snow shovel and a first aid kit. Most people have none of it in the boot.
The point of the car list is being stuck, not stranded for days: a closed motorway, a drift on a B-road, a breakdown in the dark. Keep it in one bag so it moves between cars. Check the National Highways and Met Office warnings before a long winter drive, and if the warning is amber or red, the best kit is not setting off.
Save these numbers in your phone today. In a power cut your router is off, so the web isn't there to look them up.
Tick what you already have. It's saved on this device only, so come back to it.
How this site makes money. Links marked "Ad" are affiliate links. If you buy through one, Nation Preparation earns a commission from the retailer at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. We don't sell products ourselves and we have no connection with the UK Government or the Be Ready campaign. The free things on this site (the phone numbers, the alert sign-ups, the Priority Services Register) matter more than anything we link to.