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Old 10-20-2020, 07:20 PM   #1
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Jackery Explorer Batteries

Anyone have one of the Jackery Explorer battery systems? I just received our Explorer 1000 yesterday, charged it to 100%, and used it overnight with my CPAP machine. I've used a Kill-A-Watt on the CPAP machine the last five nights and it shows anywhere from .19 to .21 kWh (190 to 210 Watts) used each night. I expected that to give me at least four nights of use from this 1002 watt battery. So, last night I plugged the CPAP machine into the Kill-A-Watt and plugged that into the Explorer 1000. I expected them to be reasonably close in the power draw but that wasn't the case. As usual, the Kill-A-Watt showed .19 kWh (190 watts), but the Jackery percentage was down to 72% which would be approximately 280 watts used. I know the Jackery is gonna burn some power as well converting 24-volt to 110-volt, but I never expected this amount of overhead (42% of the 280 watts used). Anyone seen this kind of energy burn from their Jackery? I plan to try it again tonight with a different Kill-A-Watt just to ensure that aspect it correct.
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Old 10-21-2020, 09:50 AM   #2
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No anecdotal experience, but there are some reviews that mention some negative experiences with them. The majority seem to be happy with their batteries, but I would think expectations and usage play a factor in determining that level of satisfaction.
https://www.amazon.com/Jackery-Porta...ews/B07D29QNMJ
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Old 10-21-2020, 05:13 PM   #3
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Jackery claims 85% efficiency for their outputs, meaning the AC power available would only be 850 Wh. So 190Wh used should leave you at about 78%, a little closer to your actual result. Make sure you turn off the DC section by pushing the DC button, or it will draw power even if nothing is plugged in to the DC outlets.
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Old 10-30-2020, 09:27 AM   #4
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I've taken a few readings with my own cpap, a ResMed Airsense 10. Before I converted my rig over to lithium, I had made a few readings in the house with a kill-o-watt meter, as well as with a Bayite DC energy meter hooked up via a portable 12v power supply.

I measured in watt-hours because that's what these devices show. With the kill-o-watt on A/C power it consumed about 8.5 watt-hours per hour. So an 8-hour use of the cpap would take about 68 watt-hours. That's quite a bit lower than you are seeing. On the RV battery (initially simulated with a 12v power supply) I get about 7.5 watt-hours per hour by using a DC-DC power brick I bought from ResMed. So that's 60 watt-hours over 8 hours.

What was shocking to me was when I used a cheap 100W inverter with the AC-DC power brick it consumed about 18.5 watt-hours per hour! Now this was a cheap stanley inverter meant for a cigarette port in a car and hopefully your Jackery does far better than that. But this was a lesson for me not to assume that the standard AC-DC power brick paired with an inverter is a "solution." That's what my cpap store would tell me.

With that, the first thing I find interesting about your numbers is the initial kill-o-watt number of about 200 watt-hours per night. This may just be the model of cpap you have, but are you sure you have the heat turned fully off? I can't say I've tried mine ever with the heat on so not sure where it will land. Anyway, I'd double check that. Ideally you can get your kill-o-watt starting number down under 100wh.

You could also look into avoiding the inverter by seeing if your cpap has a DC-DC brick for sale. But before that, I'd do other experiments. For example, how about powering a small light. Measure with the kill-o-watt and see if you get similar results as the cpap. Also, be sure to try running WITHOUT the kill-o-watt. You can be confident the small light will be consistent in power draw. You might find the kill-o-watt itself is the cause for the difference in your measurement. That seems like a lot of juice to me, though.
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Old 10-30-2020, 12:11 PM   #5
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I haven't watched all of this but here's a link to Will Prowse's (a well regarded source) review video. Maybe you can get some insight from it:

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Old 11-04-2020, 06:43 PM   #6
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The video is hard to listen to. That guy is very animated and for the price of all that stuff I'd be considering a small generator and be done.
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Old 11-04-2020, 06:52 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by puttin View Post
The video is hard to listen to. That guy is very animated and for the price of all that stuff I'd be considering a small generator and be done.
I know that some people find Will Prowse hard to listen to but I guess I've gotten used to him. He provides a lot of good info.

I think the so-called "solar generators" are targeted at those who want a portable, multi-use power source and not primarily for RV owners who are better served by a more conventional solar/battery/generator installation.

Here's a link to a recent Will Prowse video with some "budget" LiFePO4 battery options:



I like how he tears them down and evaluates their build quality.
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Old 11-04-2020, 07:14 PM   #8
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Yes, I guess that's interesting but if I had to use a cpap i think I'd be looking for something needing less involvement from me or someone else to keep it going and maintained. If that person is boondocking, why not consider a higher capacity battery bank along with a more efficient inverter depending on what the needs are. -Something that can do a variety of things. Also, some sleep stuff can operate on d/c. I'm not sure what the efficiency would be over a/c, if any.
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Old 11-04-2020, 08:22 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by puttin View Post
Yes, I guess that's interesting but if I had to use a cpap i think I'd be looking for something needing less involvement from me or someone else to keep it going and maintained. If that person is boondocking, why not consider a higher capacity battery bank along with a more efficient inverter depending on what the needs are. -Something that can do a variety of things. Also, some sleep stuff can operate on d/c. I'm not sure what the efficiency would be over a/c, if any.
Operating off of DC eliminates the inefficiency overhead of an inverter. My CPAP can operate off of DC or AC w/transformer.
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Old 11-05-2020, 01:29 PM   #10
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Our experience echos Tinglett's reply of only using 68 watt hours (about 5.5AH of 12V DC) overnight when he leaves the heater off on his CPAP.

My wife uses her CPAP every night, a ResMed from 2013 that run off of 12V so it can plug directly into an RV's 12V power. She leaves the heater off and it uses less than 1amp per hour. When it is turned off I can't detect that it uses any power so we just leave it plugged in to the 12V outlet. Just to be clear, her CPAP came with a 120V AC power cord, but all that does is change the 120V AC to 12V DC.
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Old 11-05-2020, 03:05 PM   #11
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Originally Posted by al1florida View Post
My wife uses her CPAP every night, a ResMed from 2013 that run off of 12V so it can plug directly into an RV's 12V power. She leaves the heater off and it uses less than 1amp per hour. When it is turned off I can't detect that it uses any power so we just leave it plugged in to the 12V outlet. Just to be clear, her CPAP came with a 120V AC power cord, but all that does is change the 120V AC to 12V DC.
Wow...keep that CPAP! Those numbers are amazing. I started a hunt for a machine that could run directly on 12v, but even the online CPAP stores seem very ignorant of anything about the power supplies. At my own store (Mayo Clinic) they just pointed me to inverters. The cheap Stanley inverter that I tried was horrible (https://www.stanleytools.com/product...hargers/pca120). This may have to do with the fact that my CPAP has an amp draw that varies with my breathing. The inverter seemed to always be lost with its corresponding power draw.

I found ResMed had a 12v brick for the AirSense 10 and I was glad I bought it. I was thinking it was really just a generic 12v-24v DC-DC converter, but it isn't. If you look carefully at the plug of the AirSense 10 you'll find two voltages. I believe the middle pin was something like 3.3v. The brick was about $90 and my first intuition was that it was going to be worse than an inverter with AC brick, but I was pleasantly surprised this wasn't true.

Also, the new CPAPs tend to have cell modems that also need to be turned off (airplane mode). Look for that, too, as it might consume more power than you'd think.
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Old 11-05-2020, 03:09 PM   #12
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Oh, and now I realize you said 1 amp. I was thinking watts. That's a bit of difference. So my 7.5 watts would be approx 7.5/13.2v = 0.6A. Still, the simplicity of 12v only is VERY nice.
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Old 11-08-2020, 09:19 AM   #13
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The 2 or maybe 3 new CPAPs I have looked the specs on have all be 24V models. I guess they do that to reduce the wire size or maybe component cost so we now need a 12V to 24V converter or a inverter. I would think the inverter is less efficient as we would be inverting 12V DC to 120V AC and then the CPAP's power cord coverts the 120V back to 24V DC.

BTW my wife's CPAP fluctuates the current draw as she breathes. Only about 0.1 to 0.2 amps. When she removes the mask and the fan speed increases, the current draw jumps maybe 0.3-0.4amp.
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Old 11-08-2020, 10:20 AM   #14
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12V to 24V converters aren't too expensive. This one ($15.90) claims 95% efficiency:

https://www.amazon.com/24V-Boost-Con...tronics&sr=1-6
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Old 11-08-2020, 07:24 PM   #15
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I initially planned to buy a generic brick under the assumption that I just needed to find (or make) the right barrel plug for it. When I finally got around to it and looked at the plug, I found it has an outside band (ground), inside band (24v), and a pin (3.3v). I believe these are also used by some laptops. In the end I bought the brand name brick for about $90 which is a lot more, but I have had zero concern about breaking the machine with it. It's possible that some machines don't have available DC-DC bricks, though.

I found the combination of a cheap stanley 120w inverter with the AC-DC brick was terrible. It used a lot more power, and also was quite unstable when the voltage was below 13v. I'll speculate the inverter produced a horrible wave that got worse with lower voltage.

My layman's understanding of AC-DC "power bricks" is the brick rectifies the AC (i.e., makes DC of it), then produces AC at very high frequency (over 20kHz) which runs through a small step-down transformer, which is then rectified back to DC. It's a bit more complicated to get a very steady DC output, but that's roughly it. A DC-DC brick is pretty much the same, except it doesn't need to rectify the input voltage to DC. The high frequency allows the transformer to be small and efficient. I thought that was rather interesting when I finally looked into it.
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