Jackery (1000) 'Capacity Expansion'/Alternative Method of Charging?

[HammerToe]

Second question: the Jackery 1000 comes with a 1000 W Pure Sine Wave Inverter. On the input/charging side. As far as I can tell the fastest way one could undertake to charge it would be at somewhere around 165 or so watt rate. (If I recall correctly from Wil’s review, it seemed to be approximately in that range no matter how one tried to charge it whether off solar panels or the AC power supply that came with it. As I recall, the there might have been a small difference around ½ a dozen or so watts but that’s really inconsequential; I try not to be ‘too anal’ about these things. (Comment: it would be nice if Portable Power Stations like this would deliver at least their rated capacities but frankly, to my tastes, anything that managed to hit 95% would be a ‘pass’ for my purposes.

One other possible way of course to charge it would be by using the 12 V DC ‘Cigarette Lighter’ adapter. As I recall, the maximum rate that this guy could charge or’s keep the Jackery charged up would be at roughly a 10 amp hour rate. (I probably should look around and see if I confirm that number up a bit because it might be I suspect a little bit less but maybe not. Anyone KNOW, ‘off the top of their head’?).

Another way would be (at least it seems to me) to try to solar panel inputs… (MAYBE…??? Somehow or other?)

If I recall the jackery specs, the input voltage range that the Jackery will tolerate at those sources was advertised to be anything between 12 V and 30 V. And I do recall that Wil mentioned ‘something like’ you’re probably wanted to actually be able to provide at least around 17 to 18 V MINIMUM and that he recommended that one try to use panels with a no-load voltage of around 21 or 22 V or something, BUT --- there are those ‘specs’ that ‘Jackery quoted’ and so to some degree or other, it might be possible possibly even ‘practical’.

Anyone know what might go on/how this might work out if one tried it? Again, I seem to recall that Wil’s Review Video seemed to indicate that at some point or other, the input charging current that the jackery would ‘see’ (on the output side of its built-in MPPT controller) would ‘fall off’ below that 17V or 18 V level.

But again, they do mention that 12V DC minimum voltage at those inputs ‘could be used’ to some degree or other so…

Comments, anyone?

In anticipation of possibly ‘discouraging news’ that it either wouldn’t work or work very well from a practical standpoint (e.g. – Charging Rates would be too low and slow), I haven’t bothered to check yet but I suspect it might be possible and not to expensive to simply use some sort of DC to DC Boost Converter between the battery and those inputs to pump the voltage up to 17V to 22 V even.

I just did a quick check on Amazon.CA (I live in Canada) and I found that one could purchase what appeared to be such a converter available for about $25 or so, one which was rated at 600 W which it seems to me would come out to around 50 A at about 12 V and all you would need if you just couldn’t go directly into the solar MPPT controller would be 17V to 22 V.

Anyway, while I might be completely ‘out to lunch’ and have missed something, it seemed to me that one where another, it should be possible without too much additional expense IF NECESSARY, to find a way to use an external 12 V battery of any particular chemistry one might want to charge or MAINTAIN THE CHARGE OF THE JACKERY using it as a power source.

The reason I am interested in trying to see what may or may not be possible here is because ‘raw’ lithium iron phosphate 12 volt batteries with decent BMS’s are coming down in price fast. And it would be nice if it were possible to in a sense EXPAND THE CAPACITY OF A Jackery AND SIMPLY BE ABLE TO USE IT TO CHARGE/MAINTAIN THE CHARGE OF THE JACKERY ITSELF, subject of course to the fact that you would never be able to exceed a charge rate of about 165 W or thereabouts.

Obviously this would not be of much use if one had Sustained AC Power Requirements in excess of about 165 W or so BUT ‘I would bet’ that ‘a lot of people’/’applications’ do exist which might have power demands less than that for very long periods and if this would work, it could dramatically increase the usefulness and value that one could get for the money spent on a Jackery.

And if it worked, then obviously there would be no limit (except in a practical sense) to the number of 12 V batteries ‘upstream’ from Jackery’s (wired in parallel) that one could essentially employ to extend - in a sense - the capacity of a Jackery subject to long periods of AC power draw not being in excess of the maximum input charging rate that could be supplied from the Upstream Batteries.

(Of course, there would be the issue of recharging ‘upstream batteries’ of course, but that’s not that big problem I don’t think. For example, if one had any other means whatsoever available to them, one could find a way to keep the upstream batteries recharged via the AC outlets on the Jackery going through/driving even any old battery charger capable of charging lithium iron phosphate batteries. Another way to do it might be to simply charge them off the 12 V (actually 13.6 volt) ‘Cigarette Lighter’ outputs of the Jackery itself! Now course you probably want to disconnect the upstream batteries from the Jackery while you were doing this, but one could simply install and use - assuming that someone wanted to do something like this – an appropriate 12 volt double pole/double throw toggle to flip between ‘upstream batteries feed Jackery’ and ‘Jackery feeds upstream batteries’.

Now course this wouldn’t necessarily be all that efficient or anything --- necessarily --- could take a long time because you’d probably at max be looking at something around a 10 amp charge rate each way but that frequently doesn’t matter, and if it did, you could still find a way to charge the upstream batteries via Solar or another ‘generic’ suitable AC charger (even a bench power supply) if one had access to AC or one of those fancy, dancy DC to DC converter’s that one could install to enable fast charging often automobiles alternator.

Anyway, any thoughts on this? I kind of figured it was an interesting idea to kick around.

One final thing (Wil or anyone): here’s one thing you might consider if you have some spare time on your hands: Why don’t you consider when you review these solar generators producing some sort of spreadsheet/chart which would reveal the exact charge rates in amps across the entire voltage range (to the extent it made sense - things might ‘flatten out’ at some point above/below certain thresholds). In the case of the Jackery, that would be across the entire 12 V to 30 V range. (I do recall that you did indicate in your video but I forget ‘off the top of my head’ exactly how things fell off - how far/how fast around the 17 V mark.

A (more or less ‘standardized’) chart showing this kind of data MIGHT be an interesting thing to include with your reviews of solar generators in the future. You say for example/frequently advise people to ‘over panel’ and/or ‘buy solar panels’ with certain minimum/maximum output voltage ranges but it seems to me that – and I would be interested in this – exactly ‘what happens’ if you don’t meet these minimum and maximum thresholds (clearly, you don’t want to go over the maximum) but, for example, assuming that someone happened to have some old panels around that were ‘under spec’ on the voltage output side, how much might that be ‘costing you’ in terms of decreased charging rates?

Anyway, any comments anyone?

 

[macheung]

So you want to charge the Jackery 1000 faster? Can you plug in solar and AC adapter at the same time using the 2 inputs?

You may want to consider the Jackery 1500. That can charge around 300W using the AC adapter (close to 500w if you plug 2 AC adapters in) and close to 350W using 4 x 100W solar panels.

Why you want it to charge so quickly again?

 

[HammerToe]

I’ve included below a response to another post that I made which might at least partially help to answer your questions? Right here, at the beginning, I will attempt to focus more precisely on your two specific questions:

Overall, one of the intended possible uses for a Jackery (of any kind) was to possibly justify spending the money in order to ‘saving money’ by having to buy or at least replace cells in conventional lead acid UPSes commonly used with computers. But in order to do that, you would definitely want to – in my opinion – want to be able to keep the energy flowing in as fast as the computer on the output side was pulling it out. All I really wanted was not so much to simply ‘charge the Jackery faster’ - but rather try to make sure that on the charging side, the charger would be able to ‘keep up with’ the discharge rate on the other end.

Using a power meter, I checked a couple of my DESKTOP PCs (I have five of them in the house; plus a couple of laptops) and even probably my most power-hungry desktop - excluding the ‘monitor’ - only wound up consuming about 135 W or so and if I recall correctly, a Jackery 1000 and be charged at about 165 W (I seem to recall the ‘dial’ reading 166 W) so that would’ve been enough for my purposes).

A second Desktop computer that I have built around a Ryzen 5 3600 and an X470 chipset motherboard consumes even less power – less than 80 W even at ‘Full Throttle’ with the CPU loaded up 100% EASILY within the range of a Jackery 1000 in the sense of being able to be able to maintain the battery at 100% analogous to the way UPSes do it so no problem there. (As I recall, computer UPSes NORMALLY pass power AROUND the battery and inverter subsystem and in the event of a power failure, simply ‘switch over to it’ within a few milliseconds which is fast enough to prevent the computer from crashing.

As mentioned in the email (content) below, I decided to purchase some lithium iron phosphate cells and I’m still looking around for a BMS for it - Overkill Solar 4S 120A or equivalent but have not been able to locate anything so far. I’m sure I’ll be able to find one sooner or later. The batteries were shipped to me FINALLY after about 3 ½ weeks since I placed the order on June 1st. Not sure when they’re going to arrive.

I was quite impressed with the Jackery once I got it. A very nice, ‘sweet’ little unit.

As a possible item of interest: I was impressed enough that I wound up also purchasing a Jackery 300. Originally, I hadn’t been that interested in that particular unit UNTIL I learned that you could charge it simultaneously through the normal AC charge port AND using the USB-C port. I’m pretty sure I got it right/that I understand this stuff right then of course you’d have to have two power sources BUT, assuming you can have them available to you, I seem to recall you can charge a Jackery 300 at around 120 W! Which is pretty damn good for such a unit. Working from memory here, but I seem to recall that it takes roughly 7-7 ½ hours to charge a fully discharged ship Jackery 1000 BUT it looks like you can charge a Jackery 300 and as little as 2 ½ hours and probably no more than about four hours using the standard charger.

The charging times are not that significant/important to me… It was really the ‘Ability to Keep Up’ on the charging side with current draw on the discharge side that I was concerned about. But now that I don’t plan to use it as a UPS anymore, not a problem.

One final thing I think I might mention before I close this part of my response: just for your information, I have actually taken to USING 4K TVs for computer monitors. It seems like just about any 4K TV that doesn’t compress the video signal - specifically you need to look for a parameter called ‘Chroma’ and the specification of 4:4:4. If a 4K TV supports Chroma 4:4:4, it is very likely in my opinion that it will prove satisfactory - in fact, more than satisfactory - better, by my tastes – than any computer monitor I have ever owned! I am currently using a couple of TCL 55 inch six series TVs for computer monitors – setback about 4 feet from my eyes - and they are absolutely fabulous! AND MUCH CHEAPER THAN ANY REMOTELY COMPARABLE MONITORS.

Probably the best – the very best (in the 55 inch range) and best TV in terms of price to use as a monitor as I am doing would be an LG 55 inch OLED TV in LG’s ‘B series’.

One might wish to ‘go higher up’ in the series if one wanted esoteric specs and variable refresh rates and things like that if one happened to be a gamer but absolutely, positively, “the cat’s ass” monitor for the price would be – in my opinion – an OLED 4K HDTV. And you get speakers built-in that are pretty darned good plus the ability to – of course – use it as a TV.

The reason an OLED TV would probably be the best is because of the EXTREMELY Wide Viewing Angle. Using a non-OLED TV, one might find/experience ‘dimming gradients’ at either or both the upper or lower CORNERS of the TV. With OLED, that would not be a problem at all. In my particular case, this hasn’t proven to be a problem at 4 feet away from my eyes. I also happened to have a still unboxed 65 inch 4K TCL six series which sooner or later I’m going to wind up hanging on amount in my den – displacing a 70 series 1080 P Sony (3D capable) and I have a pretty good sense that it’s going to be able to work out pretty well and be useful as a computer monitor as well from a distance of perhaps 8 feet where I sit.

Might sound crazy, but when you try it… It works really well. You can simply sit there with a wireless keyboard and mouse and communicate with the desktop (or even a laptop that can happen to ‘do’ 4K (and, unless you’re a gamer, even works perfectly well at 30 Hz which the TV can do) without any flicker or anything like that. You can just sit there in an easy chair and use the PC and mouse and check your email and do your spreadsheeting and whatever you want to do and switch back and forth between TV and ‘Monitor’ using the remote.

I figure… All you need is a ‘porta potty’ to sit on and a small fridge with beer at your side and you wouldn’t have to move all day. Throw in a bidet… The possibilities are ‘endless’… (Pun intended!).

Anyway, below is my response to another email that I referred to that expands on things further.

Appreciate your thoughts and questions.

Thanks

************************************************************************
(Whoops. too many characters. But if you search for my other response/most recent post, you should be able to find it!)

 

[macheung]

Ok so you want to use the Jackery like a UPS.

I actually am doing the exact same using with 2 Goal Zero Yeti 400 (extra left over from my office, and bought them home when we all started to work from home) where I hook them up to an AC charger and then to my router and switches. The AC charger can charge them at 80W, and I draw power at around 40W so the batteries remain full. Those are similar to Jackery 500 except they use Lead Acid AGM batteries, which is good to operate nearly full.

Jackery 1000 have limited charge rates, I think it is around 165W so that's the max average load you can draw from it without draining the battery. You can upgrade to a Jackery 1500 which can charge at 300W with the included AC, or if you buy another AC adapter it can charge at 500W.

My concern here is that you'll be putting extra wear on the Jackery Li-Ion battery as it ages faster if it is kept at 100% full. I keep mine at 90% full to balance out minimizing degradation vs usage readiness. Lead acids are opposite, they want to be kept full and storing less than full will damage them. https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries. In fact, if you store Li-Ion at 100% at 25C for 1 year, they battery will loose 20% capacity. If you store it at 40%, it will only loose 4%. The biggest gap is from 90-100%.

 

[HammerToe]

Thanks, appreciate your response. You may notice her in case you haven’t, search around for two other responses I have posted in this forum recently related to this idea. Yeah, I’m pretty much convinced that avoid too much ‘wear and tear’ on a lithium-ion battery based power source in the form of a Jackery of any type is probably not a good idea for the reasons you mention. If you check out my other responses, you may note that in them I have mentioned that I plan on building myself a LITHIUM IRON PHOSPHATE SYSTEM (12.8v 280Ah 4S) to use instead. I ordered the cells back around May 5 or 8 or something like that and I just received an email telling me that my order had finally been shipped on June 1. So now ‘God Only Knows’ how long it’s going to take before they arrive. I am still looking for a specific BMS to use with it - I’m trying to get ‘one of those’ Overkill Solar 120A 4S units either from them or from some other source but they are really hard to find. I have an order outstanding on one of these through AliExpress but I currently do not know its status ‘even’. LOTS OF CONFUSION going on out there because of the chaos caused by the coronavirus thing and politics and geopolitics in sanctions and embargoes and rules and regulations surrounding shipping and so on. However, ultimately I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to get one, one where another. If you have any advice to offer or know any place I can order one, would be appreciated.

Also, thanks for the suggestion that I check out Battery University. I’ve ‘Been There’ before in the past and browse the articles and so I went back and gave a quick look at the specific one you referred me too. ‘The topic of How to Prolong the Life of Lithium Based Batteries’ is really far more complex than people think because you never get something’ for nothin’ – you’re essentially trading off to one degree or other longevity for capacity OR SOMETHING ELSE. One of the other things for example is the subject of ‘compression’ (“To compress or not compress; that is the question”). Yeah, compressing batteries might extend the number of – and this is very important – FULL DISCHARGE RECHARGE CYCLES – by about 75%, but you start to see ‘greater delta capacity losses’ earlier in the cycle counts and/BUT which taper and stay above 80% up until 3500 cycles according to some of the charts. And to some degree or other, ones has to admit that it might even be beneficial to not only not compress but leave some space between battery cells for airflow to help keep them from heating up to whatever degree they want to heat up and possibly – in the case – where one might wish to try to install heaters in an enclosure containing the batteries to allow them to warm up faster so that they can be charged. And then, it might be nice and desirable to be able to install temperature sensors between two cells assuming one had the appropriate amount of space to do so to measure temperatures.

And then there is the whole subject of: “Well, if all you want to do is get more life cycles out of the battery - and again – ‘FULL DISCHARGE RECHARGE CYCLES’ – “Couldn’t you just do that by ‘shaving’ a few millivolts off the high-end to have the BMS shut off charging at perhaps as little as five or 10 mV under 3.65 V and/or also cut off discharging maybe down even around 3.0 V or so. Actually, if you think about it, there are probably several ‘bands’ of high and low cut off voltages that could specify to get whatever amount of capacity ‘less than 100%’ to extend the battery life also.

Currently, I’m leaning towards (a) not bothering to try to compress the battery cells, (b) deliberately leaving a small amount of space between the batteries for airflow and cooling and possibly so that I can insert a temperature sensor between them and (c) just playing around with charge/discharge voltages and ‘shoot for’ a target capacity of around 97 to 98% or so. I think that doing something like this represents a pretty decent compromise in the sense that you don’t have to give up an awful lot of life expectancy in terms of lifecycles and I bet the compromise of slightly dialing back from maximum capacity extraction parameters will in and of themselves help extend the useful lifetime of the battery.

I watch Will’s video on this subject again yesterday wondering if there was anything I could add to it. I couldn’t really think of anything; rather I think I would simply choose to emphasize a couple of points he made: (a) first of all, when we start looking at these tactics to extend the life of lithium iron phosphate batteries, we always seem to lose sight of the fact that they are typically measured in FULL Discharge/Recharge cycles (which the vast majority of people will hardly ever do; they will typically only extract a portion of the capacity on a daily basis) AND (b) that 2000 cycles as defined is 2000 DAYS and 2000 DAYS IS ALMOST 5 ½ YEARS *AND* (c) we also seem to forget (sort of like in a three space Cartesian coordinate system we can only relate to displacements along a single axis at a time), that even at the end of that time the batteries should still be down TO no more than 80% or so, and are still completely usable. Really, it depends upon the individual owner and when they decide to replace the batteries.

And so a point that Will made – “that nobody really knows how long these batteries will last” BECAUSE it depends upon how they are used and what and individuals perspective on “when they should be replaced” might happen to be? He may not have said it as explicitly as I might have said it but I would’ve put it this way: “You can drive yourself crazy and get into all kinds of debates and arguments about how one should do what and why?” but that all depends upon the individual and their application and tolerance/preference levels and so on. AND/BUT UNLESS WE ARE VERY VERY CAREFUL, WE ALWAYS SEEM TO LOSE PERSPECTIVE ON THINGS – that we are talking about very long life expectancies here in practical, real-world applications and that these batteries very well might ‘outlast their owners’.

That about nails it, I think.

Anyway, thanks for the recommendation to check out Battery University again. I did and I’m going to go back there some more. Been there before but as I’ve learned more, things seem to make more sense and are certainly more relevant.

Cheers!