So, the background here is that The Jacekry, which has been working out quite well, has a hiccup – because of the type of battery it uses, charging it when the temp is below freezing will damage the battery. The battery will output power below freezing, but it will not recharge since the battery management system in the Jackery will disable the charging circuit when the temp is too low.
Now, the obvious solution is to keep the unit someplace where it will be warm. However, no such option is available at the moment. Even if I put the Jackery in the conex, it is still just in a large unheated box. It will get just as cold in there as it will outside. No help there.
But…it occurred to me that the Jackery, as it is running, has a cooling fan running. Why does it need a cooling fan? Because it generates some degree of heat. Hmmm. So, hear me out, what if the Jackery was placed in an insulated box that retained that heat to keep the unit above freezing? The type of battery used by the Jackery does not off-gas like other batteries, so thats not an issue. And, any container wouldnt necessarily be airtight anyway….think something like a styrofoam cooler with a couple small holes punched though for the cables.
This is something I need to experiment with while the weather is still reasonable. There is, of course, a couple risks here. One risk would be that, on a particularly unseasonable day, temps could get high enough that there might be a risk of overheating. I believe I can mitigate this by setting the Jackery to shut itself off and then restart in several hours (the app gives you the option of setting times for it to run). The problem with that is it would mean that when the Jackery restarts Starlink would re-boot and while I admire what Elon has created, theres no guarantee the reboot wouldnt require me to be there hands-on for a problem.
The Jacekry app indicates the temperature at the unit. So, on my next trip up there, drop it in an insulated container and track the temperature for a few hours while Im up there and see what happens.
And speaking of, local Costco has the same package I have of Jackery back in stock. However, it is not on sale as it was when I bought. Still though, I’ve been pleased with it so far and even at ‘full price’ I’m tempted top get another.
Anyway, I’ll let you know how this experiment goes.
Maybe even put a small (10-15w) electric bulb in the cooler too. Or, if you want to go down a rabbit hole, find a thermal switch that will turn it on and off at suitable temps.
And don’t forget to insulate the bottom of the cooler – the floor is cold.
Zero,
A snug box from 2″ XPS foam (the pink/blue/purple sheets from Home Depot) beats a picnic cooler. Right-size it with a little air around the Jackery and keep the fan and cable paths open.
Lining the walls with aluminum foil tape does little, but use the tape on the seams so the box doesn’t leak.
Insulation only slows the cool-down. At 10–35 W there isn’t much leftover heat at night. A small thermostatic pad under the unit is what actually holds it above the charge cutoff. Something in this class works: BN-LINK 20 W seedling mat with thermostat (https://a.co/d/0ajuGTnF) (set point goes down to 40 °F).
Don’t block the Jackery vents, and log box temp against the app reading. We are all very curious to see how this pans out for you.
Phillip
I actually have that seeding mat in my greenhouse and has worked for about a decade, with the thermostat. Of course it will run non stop in the extreme cold, but will shut off when you program it to. There is a lot of products out there that warm batteries, although some with warnings not to warm lithium, supposedly the Bluetti is better at cold temps.
https://www.cloudynights.com/forums/topic/831826-jackery-portable-power-in-cold-weather/
What about putting the battery in one of the underground caches? They stayed cool in the summer, perhaps they will stay warm in winter. Then just run a cable out through the top.
Have remote temperature gauges on order to see if it does in fact stay above freezing in there.
Hey, I worked in Jackson Hole, and we had flat warming pads that can be attached to a battery to keep it above freezing. We had them on hard drives and any battery out in the sub zero environment. Probably not too hard to disassemble and slap one on the battery pack.
Commander Zero,
The Jackery Extreme Guard Carrying Bag is a heated protective sleeve and case designed to keep portable power stations functional in freezing weather.
Key Features
USB-C Heating: Features an integrated heating component powered via USB-C to prevent battery shutdowns and maintain core operational temperatures in extreme cold (down to -40°C exterior tolerance).
Weatherproof Design: Built with IP54 waterproof and dustproof ratings to shield against rain, snow, dirt, and splashes.
Full Port Access: Engineered so you can operate, plug in, and charge devices directly through the bag without exposing the entire unit to the elements.
i have a different brand (Read that as: COPY/CLONE) for mine and it worked for me well last year!!
Maybe contacting jackery coukd provide insight ?
According to Reddit subgroups dedicated to this sort of thing, Jackery advises against enclosures. However users report doing so with no issues.
For what it’s worth, my Starlink Mini has never required anything more than providing power to it in order to get up and running.
Well, also having to align it, but given that you wouldn’t be moving yours to a new location every time you turn it on, that won’t be an issue.
So, there shouldn’t be any problems with it coming online all by itself once power starts to flow. YMMV, of course, but it’s fairly foolproof.
Concur on the Starlink reboot. My mini has moved from house to car to Rv dozens of times with no hiccups. Not to mention power blinks (Florida thunderstorms).
Perhaps move to a nickel metal hydride ( think I have that correct?) battery system to get rid of the freezing problem. I use rechargeable ones on my game cams to avoid that freezing problem. Intersecting problem. Btw, starlink reboots pretty quickly and seamlessly in my experience .
Follows is an AI quick dive into jackery’s internal power consumption just being alive. Between the base keep alive power for electronics, inefficiencies in providing power to your cameras, etc. you may generate enough native heat to keep the thing warm if you put it in an insulated box. Using solid, closed cell insulation board you can get about R-10 per inch so a 4 inch box would be R-40. Might do the trick. AI used a slightly different model than yours due to spec availability but you can probably sort that out easily.
Query:
review the specs of the jackery explorer power system and determine it’s own power consumption when running. This would include the cooling fan and any electronics boards plus waste heat from charging
ChatGPT said:
Yes. The key point is that the Jackery’s own consumption is not just the cooling fan. There are several internal losses: battery/BMS electronics, DC/DC converters, inverter electronics, the AC sine-wave inverter, display/control electronics, and heat from the charging circuitry. The fan is only one part of that loss.
There is one important ambiguity: “Jackery Explorer” covers many models. For a concrete analysis, I’ll use the Jackery Explorer 2000 Plus (JE-2000C) as the main example, since it is a current 2-kWh-class Explorer and Jackery publishes unusually useful specifications for it.
Explorer 2000 Plus: what Jackery actually specifies
Jackery lists:
Battery: 2,042.8 Wh LiFePO₄
AC output: 3,000 W continuous / 6,000 W surge
AC charging: up to about 1,750–1,800 W
AC recharge time: approximately 2 hours
Cooling fan: ≤30 dB
Standby power consumption: 25 W
Operating temperature for discharge: −10 to 45 °C
J
Jackery
+1
That 25 W standby figure is extremely important for your question. It is much more useful than trying to estimate the fan separately, because the 25 W is the manufacturer’s stated whole-unit standby consumption. In other words, it encompasses the electronics that are operating in standby rather than being simply “25 W for the fan.”
At 25 W, the Explorer itself consumes:
25 W × 24 h = 600 Wh/day
if left powered up continuously with the output system active but no external load.
That’s roughly 29% of the nominal 2,042.8-Wh battery per day.
So if you’re thinking about using one as a continuously operating power system, the internal consumption is significant.
But charging is a different question
Suppose we charge the completely depleted 2,042.8-Wh battery from the AC input.
The battery has to receive approximately:
2,042.8 Wh
of electrical energy.
If it really takes about 2 hours, the average energy actually stored is:
2,042.8 / 2 ≈ 1,021 W
So the battery is absorbing roughly 1.02 kW on average during a nominal 2-hour charge.
But the wall isn’t supplying only 1.02 kW.
The AC charger has losses, the BMS has losses, wiring has losses, balancing electronics have losses, and the charging process itself generates heat. The cooling fan also has to remove some of that heat.
Therefore:
AC input power = battery charging power + charging-system losses
A reasonable example
If the system averaged 1,200 W from the wall while putting 1,021 W into the battery:
1,200 − 1,021 = 179 W
would be being dissipated as heat and other losses.
That’s about:
85.1% charging efficiency
and 179 W of heat.
If the actual input averaged 1,300 W:
1,300 − 1,021 = 279 W
or about 78.5% efficiency.
If it averaged 1,100 W:
1,100 − 1,021 = 79 W
or about 92.8% efficiency.
The manufacturer’s published maximum input of roughly 1,750–1,800 W doesn’t mean it consumes that continuously during a normal two-hour charge; it’s the maximum input capability.
J
Jackery
So we shouldn’t simply subtract 1,021 W from 1,800 W and call the difference the heat.
The more interesting number: losses while actually powering something
This is where the distinction between 25 W standby and conversion losses becomes important.
If you connect, say, a 500-W AC appliance to the Explorer, the battery isn’t necessarily supplying 500 W.
The inverter has to convert the battery’s roughly 40–50 V DC into 120-V 60-Hz AC. That conversion isn’t 100% efficient.
A useful model is:
Battery power ≈ external load + inverter/electronics losses
So if the appliance consumes 500 W and the power station’s AC conversion is, for example, 90% efficient:
500 / 0.90 = 556 W
comes from the battery.
The Jackery itself is therefore consuming approximately:
556 − 500 = 56 W
in addition to the 500-W load.
Some of that becomes heat in the inverter MOSFETs, transformer/inductors and other power electronics; some powers the control electronics and fan.
At lower loads, this gets much worse because the fixed overhead becomes a larger percentage.
For example, if the internal system requires 20–25 W just to stay awake, a 50-W external load can result in a surprisingly large percentage loss.
We actually have some measured data
A recent independent test of the Explorer 2000 Plus measured approximately:
1,780 Wh delivered through AC
1,821 Wh through the DC output
against the nominal 2,042 Wh battery
That corresponds to approximately 87% AC-side energy delivery efficiency and 89% DC-side efficiency under the test conditions. The same test measured about 1.15% of battery capacity per hour consumed while the inverter was awake with no useful load.
P
Power Station Geek
1.15% of 2,042.8 Wh is:
23.5 W
which is remarkably close to Jackery’s published 25-W standby consumption.
That gives us some confidence that the 25-W specification is a meaningful representation of the unit’s real internal idle consumption rather than simply an arbitrary number.
So where does the heat go?
Think of the Explorer as having this energy flow:
AC/solar input
↓
MPPT / AC charger
↓
battery + BMS
↓
DC bus
↓
DC/DC converters + inverter
↓
your appliance
Everything that doesn’t make it to the appliance ultimately becomes heat.
For AC output, roughly:
Battery energy → appliance
with the difference being:
inverter switching losses
magnetic-component losses
DC/DC conversion losses
BMS/electronics consumption
display/control circuitry
cooling fan
wiring/connectors
battery internal resistance
The fan isn’t really the major energy consumer. The power semiconductors and magnetic components doing the conversion are the dominant heat sources when the unit is heavily loaded.
The fan’s job is to remove that heat.
Charging heat is particularly interesting
If you’re charging at high power, the Explorer is effectively a roughly 1.5–1.8-kW electrical heater in addition to being a battery charger.
For example, if you’re putting ~2,043 Wh into the battery but have to draw 2,300 Wh from the wall:
2,300 − 2,043 = 257 Wh
has been lost.
That 257 Wh ultimately becomes heat.
If that happens over two hours, that’s an average of:
128.5 W of heat
inside the machine.
That’s equivalent to having a small incandescent bulb running inside the enclosure.
And this is why the fan becomes necessary during rapid charging.
An independent 2000 Plus review also reports that the fan engages during charging and that simultaneous high-power charging and discharging causes substantially greater thermal loading.
P
Power Lab
A useful engineering estimate
For the Explorer 2000 Plus, I’d use these numbers for system design rather than assuming the advertised battery capacity is all available to the load:
Operating condition Approx. internal consumption/loss
Awake, essentially no load ~23–25 W
50 W AC load potentially ~30–40+ W total overhead/loss
100 W AC load potentially ~30–50 W overhead/loss
500 W AC load roughly ~50–80 W loss
1,000 W AC load roughly ~100–150 W loss
Heavy charging potentially ~100–300+ W of heat/loss
Near maximum AC output substantially more heat; fan becomes significant
The middle rows are engineering estimates, not Jackery specifications, and the exact numbers depend strongly on load, temperature, battery state and inverter operating mode.
The measured ~87% end-to-end AC efficiency gives us a useful reality check: at a sustained 1,000-W AC load, an 87% overall conversion would imply about:
1,000 / 0.87 = 1,149 W
from the battery, or approximately:
149 W of internal loss.
That’s a much more realistic way of thinking about the machine than saying “the fan uses X watts.”
If your goal is thermal engineering
If you’re considering putting a Jackery in an enclosure, running it continuously, or using it as a UPS/backup power system, I’d design around the heat output, not the fan wattage.
For example, at a 1,000-W continuous AC load, I would conservatively expect on the order of 100–150 W of heat generated inside the Jackery, and potentially more under unfavorable conditions.
At 500 W load, perhaps 50–80 W.
And with no load but the inverter awake, ~25 W of continuous heat is a good starting point.
During rapid charging, the heat can temporarily be substantially higher.
One other important observation
The 2000 Plus isn’t unique here. Jackery’s published standby numbers vary considerably by Explorer generation:
Explorer 1000 Pro: 10–15 W
Explorer 1000 Plus: 22 W
Explorer 1000 V2: 18 W
Explorer 2000 Pro: 22 W
Explorer 2000 Plus: 25 W
J
Jackery
+4
So the exact model matters a lot.
If you tell me which Explorer you have (e.g. 1000 Pro, 1000 Plus, 2000 Pro, 2000 Plus, 2000 v2, etc.), I can go one level deeper and calculate a full internal power budget—battery → BMS → inverter → fan → electronics → load, including estimated watts of heat at 50 W, 100 W, 500 W, 1 kW, and maximum load, and estimate how much that would raise the temperature inside an enclosure.
I used one of these units during the weeklong power outage from hurricane Milton a couple years ago. Don’t have to worry about freezing here but protecting the panels and unit from the rain meant setup/tear down for the first couple days. Then it became easier to just plug it in at a relative’s house who had power restored early. Mostly just ran a fan to stay cool and brewed coffee like usual instead of lighting the camp stove.
Keep in mind, if your panel output cannot go into the battery, then it can go in a pad heater or some other heat source. A simple Tstat would suffice to transition the panel to the charger…..
Simpler than a box would be to cover it with a fiberglass or similar fire blanket and set the blanket in such a manner that there is still some air flow around the fan ports.
I also like the idea of using direct solar power to power a step down converter to run a silicone thermostat controlled heating pad.