Jackery Explorer 500 Portable Power Station

Although this is the largest Jackery Portable Power Station at the moment darned if Jackery didn’t just debut a 1000 watt power station. I haven’t even pulled the screen protector off this one yet.

This is the Explorer 500 watt power station and it sure is nice.  I’ve been putting it through its paces the last few days and it is REALLY impressive and powerful.

Combined with a Jackery SolarSaga 100 solar panel makes it a self sustaining power station perfect for camping, tent camping, or getting you through a power outage at home. How many times have you needed to stretch a long power cord out around the house to do one simple task?

It really shines in an outdoor situation such as camping.  It’s a bit big and heavy to pack out and hike with unless you are some kind of beast or unless you are camping with others and the load is spread out among the team enough for someone to carry it exclusively in a huge backpack.
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Jackery SolarSaga 100

I am a big fan of Jackery Products. And it is with great pleasure that I give my two cents regarding the Jackery SolarSaga 100 solar panel .

It’s an interesting solar panel with some very pronounced pros and cons which I’ll delve into here in a bit.

First and foremost lets describe what it is.  It is a 100 watt solar panel that has an 18 volt output at 5.5 amps. Its principle purpose in life is to recharge Jackery Portable Power Stations, specifically the Jackery 160, 240, 500 and the Honda by Jackery 290.  I’m pretty sure it can be used to directly charge other items and we’ll investigate that at a later date.

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How To Hook Any Solar Panel To Jackery Portable Power Station

Jackery Solar Panels are expensive and not waterproof.  Let’s hook a regular solar panel to our portable power station.

This is another one of those instances where I didn’t discover it, didn’t design it, didn’t find the solution but am simply providing simple, easy to follow directions so that anyone can EASILY figure out how to do this.  For some reason there is a bit of discussion on how to do this with almost no documentation or photographs on how to do it.

I’ve seen lots of videos, read lots of reviews and basically they say “make sure the polarity is correct”.  On cables and adapters on Amazon if you read the reviews FOR THE SAME PRODUCT some reviews will say “Works Great, 5 Stars” and the next review will say “The polarity is reversed, they never fixed the polarity wiring”.  But nobody has ever shown simple directions that show what to order, and how to hook it up with crystal clear instructions and pictures.

So as Popeye always says “I’ve had all I can take, I can’t takes no more”.

Jackery sells their own line of solar panel chargers for their power stations but I don’t believe any of them can be exposed to water or rain and they are fairly expensive.   A decent 100 watt solar panel will set you back less than $100 and can be exposed to the pouring rain so I can totally understand why people would want to go that route.  But you should watch some of the videos where people buy panels and then splice wires together to make it work.  Some of those people are DANGEROUS.

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In a world of convenience and with an aging body why in the world do I posses a desire to go live off grid for short stints and how am I going to pull it off?  Or what if the SHTF?  Already liberals are worried Iran is going to kill us.  Silly liberals.

First of all the beauty of God’s earth is out THERE, not in my den.  I feel like I’ve missed out on so much but while this body is still capable of independent movement it is time to shake it up a bit.

It helps to write out your plan sometimes and that is what I’m doing here.  Mental dry run.

I already have the most important piece of the off grid puzzle and this will be the foundation for everything else I plan to do.  I own a small Rockwood A122 pop up A frame camper.

This is a great little rig and I’ve already had some great adventures with it. I take excellent care of it and it has everything a fella needs to sustain life in the great outdoors.

In fact it almost has too much.  Air Conditioning, Heat Pump, Furnace, hot water heater, microwave, 3 burner stove, gas BBQ grill, electric mattress, sink, refrigerator, bluetooth stereo, cable TV connections, 26 gallon water tank, etc.

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I’m a big fan of Jackery Power Stations and have had the 160 Power Station for several months now.  My Jackery 160 review is posted here.  Using it has made its strengths and weaknesses apparent and I know just where and how to use it to great effect.  I also recognized the fact that I had use for a bigger capacity power station.  Enter the Jackery Licensed By Honda 290 Power Station.

Jackery Honda 290 Power Station

The first indication that this is a high quality product is that Honda, by far, makes the best portable generators in the world.  The Honda EU2000 model of gas powered generators is LEGENDARY.

I own both the EU2000 and EU2000i Companion generator and can verify that they are powerhouses and workhorses.  Best of the best.

The odds that Honda would license Jackery to use its name and tarnish their reputation in the world of portable power is ZERO.

I think just having the Honda name attached means SOMETHING.
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I’ve stumbled across some tech that I can’t live without.  In a world of consumer goods with USB rechargeable batteries and in that same world when we are constantly on the go it’s tough to keep up with charging phones, and cameras, and tablets, and radios.

Also, I like to camp and my camper doesn’t have any USB charging outlets.  If you tent camp or do boondock camping then wouldn’t it be nice to have portable power to get you through a night or two?  A light to read by? Or power for your phone or GPS?  Do you work in the field and need to recharge batteries such a camera batteries.  I work on airport Visual Landing Aids which require precise glide slopes and I can’t tell you how many times that the surveyors have shown up and left because their batteries were dead and they had to go back and charge them.

If the power goes out at home your generator might not supply a clean sine wave which means your sensitive electronic devices could get damaged.  Clean power can be supplied from an Inverter, Inverter generator, or Inverter power station.

Or, how about this?  There isn’t an available USB port for charging because you have too much other stuff plugged in.  Perfect for a stop gap measure.

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