Is it worth buying a Jackery - ChatGPT advice

[dspuk]

Why?

Fully agree with comments and of course each to their own.

For us it (campervanning, sites, touring) was always a chance to get away from home, back to basics a little and enjoy the stripped back experience, without trying to recreate what we can do at home.

Happy, of course, that others may want to make their air fryer meals off grid while straightening their hair and boling a electric kettle.

Isn't for us, but horses for courses. If we wanted a more home like experience there is always the white whale route, which is also not our (current) bag.

 

[Flower Power]

I have the first generation Jackery 1000W. Used only a dozen of times or so when wife's CPAC breathing machine needed a reliable power while sleeping off the grid. That was a must. Other than that one solar panel on the roof does the job of keeping batteries in a loaded state. Apart from a small/low power induction cooking plate I do not have any other electric household appliances onboard.

My Jackery also came with two portable solar panels but I do not even carry them with me. They will be handy at home if we were to loose power for extended period of time (but not in a winter Alpine blizzard which we already have now). An emergency item.

 

[pinomarmo1958]

I have been wondering if it was worth buying a power station and was considering the Jackery Explorer 1000v2 on a Black Friday deal of £399. Given our use of our 24 Ocean, the only use of power other than the fridge and the lights are iPhone and iPad charging. I thought I’d ask ChatGPT for advice. Based on this my conclusion is that a power bank wouldn’t really be of much benefit, but I’d be interested in other peoples views on the AI advice copied below:

Good — clear question. Short answer first: the Jackery will give you a lot of extra phone/tablet charges (many days’ worth) but it will only modestly extend how long the leisure batteries can run the fridge and lights — because phones/tablets use very little energy compared with a fridge.

Assumptions I used

• Your van leisure bank: 2 × 75 Ah at 12 V = 1,800 Wh total.
  Typical safe usable (to protect lead-acid/AGM) ≈ 50% → ~900 Wh usable.
• Jackery Explorer 1000 v2: 1,070 Wh rated capacity. For USB/DC device charging you can effectively use most of that, so I’ll round to ≈1,000–1,070 Wh usable for simplicity.
• Device battery sizes (typical examples):
  
  • Smartphone ≈ 12 Wh (typical modern phone ~10–15 Wh).
  • Tablet (iPad) ≈ 32 Wh.
• USB/DC charging losses are small — I’ll assume ~95% efficiency for Jackery → device charging (so Jackery usable available for small-device charging ≈ 1,000 Wh).

How many phone/tablet charges from the Jackery

(Using 1,000 Wh usable from Jackery)

• Full phone charge ≈ 12 Wh → ~83 full phone charges (1000 / 12 ≈ 83).
• Full iPad charge ≈ 32 Wh → ~31 full iPad charges (1000 / 32 ≈ 31).
• Example mix: 2 phones + 1 iPad per day = 2×12 + 32 = 56 Wh/day → Jackery would cover that for ~18 days (1000 / 56 ≈ 17.8 days).

So for everyday small-device charging the Jackery is more than enough and will remove that load entirely from your leisure bank for many days.

Effect on fridge & lights runtime (what really matters)

Small electronics don’t use much energy compared with a fridge. To show the effect, here are illustrative examples.

• If the phones/tablet would otherwise draw ~56 Wh/day (example above), then moving that load to the Jackery saves the leisure bank 56 Wh per day.
• Your leisure bank usable capacity ≈ 900 Wh. If the fridge+lights draw, say, 900 Wh per day (typical small compressor fridge average — actual depends on model, ambient temp, duty cycle), then:
  
  • Without Jackery: leisure bank gives you ~1 day (900 Wh / 900 Wh/day).
  • With Jackery taking phones/tablet load: leisure bank provides 900 Wh for fridge/lights but you’ve removed 56 Wh/day from it, so the leisure bank lasts ~1.06 days — about ~1.5 hours extra of fridge runtime.
• If your fridge is more efficient (for example 450 Wh/day average), the same saved 56 Wh/day gives an extra ~0.12 day ≈ 3 hours.

So: phones/tablets are small — even many charges only free a small fraction of the leisure bank’s capacity. The Jackery will dramatically reduce the need to top up leisure batteries for device charging, but will only increase fridge/lights runtime by a few hours (unless your fridge is extremely low-draw).

Have a look at Costco they are reducing Ecoflow delta 3 by about £100. I bought one don't know if it was a good idea yet. I t

I have the first generation Jackery 1000W. Used only a dozen of times or so when wife's CPAC breathing machine needed a reliable power while sleeping off the grid. That was a must. Other than that one solar panel on the roof does the job of keeping batteries in a loaded state. Apart from a small/low power induction cooking plate I do not have any other electric household appliances onboard.

My Jackery also came with two portable solar panels but I do not even carry them with me. They will be handy at home if we were to loose power for extended period of time (but not in a winter Alpine blizzard which we already have now). An emergency item.

Have a look at Costco

I have the first generation Jackery 1000W. Used only a dozen of times or so when wife's CPAC breathing machine needed a reliable power while sleeping off the grid. That was a must. Other than that one solar panel on the roof does the job of keeping batteries in a loaded state. Apart from a small/low power induction cooking plate I do not have any other electric household appliances onboard.

My Jackery also came with two portable solar panels but I do not even carry them with me. They will be handy at home if we were to loose power for extended period of time (but not in a winter Alpine blizzard which we already have now). An emergency item.

Have a look at Costco All reading says Ecoflow is better? Deal at the mo.

 

[GrannyJen]

Have a look at Costco they are reducing Ecoflow delta 3 by about £100. I bought one don't know if it was a good idea yet. I t

Have a look at Costco

Have a look at Costco All reading says Ecoflow is better? Deal at the mo.

View attachment 142485

Well spotted!

 

[Wannabecamperman]

It depends on who your electricity supplier is but I'm with Octopus, green. At times of high demand I get paid to switch off, at times of high production I get free "all you can eat" electricity.

A small thing but.... run everything off the power banks whilst being paid not to use, charge the things up when being given it for nowt. Takes two minutes to pop my ecoflow and two spare batteries on charge or into the kitchen to cook at home with. The fact that the power banks are mobile, not dedicated only to the camper, is brilliant. Being able to bring the power to the device has saved extension leads being draped all over the place many times.

I do precisely the same with our Bluetti and the new v2 Jackery I couldn't resist in a sale. I'm on Octopus EV tariff for the cars and get 7p per kWh from 11.30pm - 5.30 am, so using timers I load up on that every night and then use the power banks for running PCs, monitors and more recently a dehumidifier during peak hours.

What started as a way to remove gas from camping trips has now become a money saver every night ay home, allowing a lot of daytime usage at 7p per kWh. I'm a big advocate of the technology.