The right wattage for a weekend trip depends less on the length of the trip and more on what you want to run at the same time. A lot of people focus on watts, but the more important number for portability is usually watt-hours, because that tells you how much energy the battery can store. Watts tell you how much power the generator can deliver at once, while watt-hours tell you how long it can keep delivering it.
For the kind of loads you mentioned, a small solar generator can often be enough. A phone charger might use 10 to 20 watts, a laptop often needs 45 to 100 watts, and a pair of LED lights may only draw 10 to 30 watts combined. A small fan might use around 20 to 60 watts. That means your total running load could easily stay under 200 watts most of the time. If you only plan to use those devices one or two at a time, a unit with a 300 to 600 watt inverter may be fine. If you expect to plug in a few things together, it is safer to look at 600 to 1,000 watts so you are not constantly near the limit.
If you want to run a cooler, the answer changes. A thermoelectric cooler can be fairly modest, but a compressor cooler may cycle on and off and draw more power when it starts. That startup surge can be several times the running wattage. In that case, a generator with a higher surge rating matters more than the headline watt number. Many people find that a 1,000 watt unit with 700 to 1,500 watt-hours is a more comfortable fit for a weekend if they want some flexibility and not just basic charging.
A simple way to size it is to list every device, find its wattage, then estimate how many hours you’ll use each one. Multiply watts by hours to get watt-hours, then add them up. For example, if you run a 20 watt light for 5 hours, that is 100 watt-hours. A 60 watt fan for 6 hours is 360 watt-hours. A laptop at 60 watts for 3 hours is 180 watt-hours. That totals 640 watt-hours, and once you account for inverter losses and some reserve, you would probably want something closer to 800 to 1,000 watt-hours.
For a typical weekend trip with charging, lights, and a small fan, many people are happy with a 500 to 1,000 watt solar generator, depending on how much they use it and whether they recharge with solar panels during the day. If you want peace of mind, size up a little. Running close to the edge is where people run into frustration.
