Our First Four Days With the New Jackery Portable Power Station

The original name in off-grid portable power stations has launched in Australia with some of the biggest and best available, including the Explorer 2000 Plus and 100W Solar Panel. We took it for a real-world test.

 

On my last camping trip, my not-so-old camping battery gave up after a few days, leaving the beers warm and food spoiling. Worst of all, me, the guy with good camping gear, had to sheepishly ask my mates for some esky space.

But this will never, ever, happen again, after picking up a new Jackery Explorer 2000 Plus Solar Generator and solar panel. It boasts a 10-year lifespan and a massive capacity of more than 2000 watt hours – about 180 amp hours.

Watt do you mean?

Think of amp hours as the endurance of a battery – how long it can continue to deliver charge – and the watts as the total energy stored. Watt Hours = Amp Hours × Voltage, this article goes deeper if you’re interested.

Real-World Testing

Before we jump into real-world testing, I should point out an important difference between LiFePO4 lithium batteries and AGM or lead acid, like the average 12v car or camping battery.

With the 180 amp hour (2160 watt hour) capacity in an AGM or lead acid battery, you can only discharge the battery to about 50% of its capacity without doing damage, so you essentially have half the advertised capacity.

With 180 amp hours (2160 watt hours) in a LiFePO4 lithium battery pack, you can use the full range of the battery and discharge it right down to zero and recharge without damage. Meaning you get full use of the advertised capacity.

Now, let me explain how BIG this actually is in a real-world scenario over four days.

Camping

First stop: a few days camping at the source of the Wilsons River.

Running our old trusty Dometic 55L fridge non-stop, and LED lights in the evening, used less than a quarter of the battery capacity for the weekend.

This is impressive, especially considering the solar panel got almost no light on it camping under the rainforest canopy.

What’s more impressive for me, is that it means it could run our camping setup easily for an entire week!

For Creatives

For those of you like me who can work on a laptop from wherever you are, being able to charge up from the beach or campsite is amazing. Those of you who use drones or thirsty cameras will find it even more important.

So after camping, I followed a friend out on a shoot, who often has a drone up in the air and needs to charge a dozen batteries in a day of shooting.

We had the Jackery SolarSaga 100W Solar Panel hooked up to the generator, consistently feeding in above 80W, even on a patchy, overcast day. This is easily enough to charge phones and other smaller devices without making a dent in the battery capacity.

On the short shoot, we charged three camera batteries and four triple As and I don’t think it took it down even 5% in capacity.

These power stations also come in other sizes and for other budgets, if you don’t need these absurd amounts of electricity on tap.

On the Tools

Next, it’s a day on the farm helping a mate with a few small jobs.

We had the camping fridge hooked up to the generator, bouncing around in the back of the tray. If we were stopping for more than about 15 minutes I’d also get the solar panel out for some sun.

We charged a 12V drill battery, ran the fridge in the hot sun all day, and off-camera I also used a 240V soldering iron and angle grinder on a car. Both these 240V accessories draw enormous amounts of power.

This still only took the battery down close to 50%.

More Than Big Numbers

The Jackery Solar Generator 2000 Plus has so far outperformed my assumptions based on the specs. I think this is due to the operating system that runs the output from the battery, so it can charge items more efficiently.

This is also noticeable in the fast charging of the battery itself. The brand claims this big battery will charge to full in just two hours. While we haven’t tested that, we charged the 2000 Plus from 30% to 100% at home in 1.5 hours. So I’m going to say that’s true.

Key Features

The big 2042.8-watt hour capacity is a lot of brawn, but the generator also has brains and is super simple to use.

To charge, simply plug anything into one of the four sockets (240v, USB, USB-C, and 12v), and the unit gives a short beep to tell you you’re charging.

The display shows exactly how much power you’re using and how much input is coming from the solar panel, as well as the percentage of power you have left. This is worlds ahead of my now-retired battery box that had me guessing at a simple volt reading.

There’s also a Jackery app, so you can monitor all the readings from your phone, and conveniently save yourself getting out of the camping chair

To utilise real sustainable power, Jackery power stations feature ‘rapid solar charging’ and can be fully charged (surprisingly quickly) by the Jackery SolarSaga panels. You can add as many as you like!

A new feature I hadn’t seen on other portable power stations was the two wheels and tow handle on the Explorer 2000 Plus, which already seems like a must in my mind.

A Real Sustainable Power Station

As you can see, the Jackery Explorer 2000 Plus is a real portable power station that can keep you and all your stuff going off-grid for days and days.

But another stand-out feature I hadn’t seen in competitors (and hadn’t even dreamed of) is the modular aspect of the brand.

If you somehow don’t have enough power, the Jackery power stations can be linked together to form bigger and bigger storage capacity AND the solar panels can also be daisy-chained together to keep increasing how much power you can generate.

You can genuinely run your devices on pure sunshine.

For example: The Jackery Solar Generator 2000 Plus can be fully charged by a single 100W SolarSaga panel in 6 hours. The monocrystalline panel has a high 23.7% efficiency, weighs 4.69kg, and is IP65 waterproof – perfect for going off-grid!

Jackery also boasts an industry-first carbon footprint verification from TÜV SÜD, making them the first portable power brand to do so and a real next-gen sustainability solution – one I’m very much looking forward to bringing camping and on the road for the next decade or so.

Put more power into your adventures by browsing the rest of Jackery’s range – they’re on sale until the 28th of December, so there’s no time like the present! Check out the sale here.