How to Power Your CPAP Machine While Camping

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:

1. Visit a Campsite with Electricity Hook-Ups

2. Power Your CPAP with you Car’s Battery

3. Or Use a Portable Power Station

Lifepo4 Power Station 15000W

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