Juice to Go? Cruising with a Jackery Explorer 1000 Portable Power Station
Boaters, especially cruisers anchoring out in beautiful remote locations, are familiar with the ever-present electricity supply puzzle. There’s hardware involved—battery banks, inverters, charging methods, generators, and more—in addition to a chicken scratch math game involving volts, watts, and amps. Some folks make do without, happy with a minimalist mobile-campsite-style experience. But for those with satellite internet systems aboard or trying to keep creature comforts like a refrigerator running cold through the night, having a dialed in electrical system is a priority.
Enter the blossoming market of portable batteries, in this case the Jackery Explorer 1000. I got an up-close look at this nifty unit while on a nine-day adventure cruise with Aspen Power Catamarans founder/owner Larry Graf aboard his C100, Cat Man Do.
“I’m tickled pink [by the Explorer 1000],” said Graf. “We’ve probably had four owners do it so far and all of them have good luck with it.”
Jackery The Company
Jackery as a company was founded in California in 2012 but is owned by Hello Tech Energy Co., Ltd, a Chinese company headquartered in Shenzhen. According to the company’s published timeline, the Explorer Series was their first lithium based portable power station launched in 2016. Jackery became a top selling outdoor brand in the United States and Japan by 2020 and has gone on to win many notable industry awards.
These days the Jackery lineup is quite extensive going beyond the portable battery units like the Explorer 1000 Graf and I fiddled with. Notably, they now sell large home backup units that can contend with gas generators during blackout situations. Jackery also sells portable solar arrays that can charge up their units like the Explorer 1000. At the time of this writing, the company reports over 900 authorized patents and 101 design awards.
What’s more, Jackery reports that all their power stations go through testing that includes IP68 waterproof and dust-resistance, -40 degrees Celsius cold resistance, and several dropping and steel ball impact trials. While perhaps not formally “marine-ized”, the portable units are designed to endure outdoor and marine environments.
Jackery utilizes lithium-ion batteries in their original Explorer power station series. They’ve also used Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide (NMC) batteries but are increasingly using Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries which are known to be more stable. While all of these kinds of batteries are widely used both by Jackery and other applications, it’s worth noting that catastrophic battery failure resulting in thermal runaway can cause fires. Jackery uses safety features like a battery management systems (BMS) and temperature sensors to prevent overcharging and other potential electrical issues in order to prevent this remote worst-case scenario.
Our Experience
As far as the specs of the unit we experimented with, the Explorer 1000 (probably v2) is roughly the size and shape of a small cooler with a similar handle at the top. It weighs in at around 24 pounds and has a three-year warranty, rated to 4,000 charging cycles. The portable power station has a 1,070-Watt hour capacity with a 1,500-Watt output. The Explorer 1000 houses several different ports: USB-A, USB-C, “cigarette lighter” DC port, three conventional AC ports, and more.
“It has a 100-AMP hour battery, almost 100-amp hours, which is a lot,” explained Graf. “It has an inverter, a charger, and it has a bunch of ports.” For Graf, the limiting factor in his electricity puzzle is a relatively small inverter, therefore a limited amount of the boat’s DC power is available as AC power. “My boat does have a big battery bank and thrusters, but no big inverter. So this is a way for me to simply have power on the boat when I need it. I’ve also used it for construction projects around the house and used it on my RV as well. It’s really handy tool to have 100 Amp hours of power ready to go.”
Before the addition of the Explorer 1000, Graf depended on his onboard solar array to charge up. The solar array is still a valuable part of life onboard, but the Jackery has been a big asset.
“At night we have foggy, cloudy weather,” said Graf of the Pacific Northwest. “My solar panels are making power, but it [the Explorer 1000] basically doubled my battery capacity for refrigerators and stuff like that.”
For Graf’s needs, he got creative with making a special cord. The Explorer 1000 has the port to be charged from a DC cigarette lighter-style cord, but Graf wanted the reverse—to use the Explorer 1000 to charge the other way, providing power directly to the boat and giving the house batteries a rest.
“I wanted to be able to take the power on the output side of it, cigarette lighter out,” said Graf. “Charge the boat on it [Explorer 1000] at night to run my fridge so it wouldn’t take my house battery banks down. So I made a cord that plugs into the cigarette lighter and the boat with a large fuse on it that plugs into the 12-Volt output on the Jackery. Now I’ve got 100 extra amp hours.” Please note that Graf is a professional engineer and boatbuilder with a whole factory, and years of marine electrical wiring experience. For safety we recommend avoiding homemade power cords unless they are created under the direction of a professional.
The Jackery Explorer 1000’s versatility shines through with the variety of charging options. When plugged into a marina’s shore power, the standard 110-Volt house-style charger works just fine. Larry can also charge while underway via his diminutive inverter, the boat’s battery banks fed by the engine’s alternator and onboard solar panels. For our trip that included companions on other larger boats (and larger inverters), a handoff for a friend to charge while underway also proved reliable.
“It takes about 2.5 hours to charge it that way,” said Graf. “There is a setting you can fast charge it too, takes about 45 minutes. It’s a little harder on the battery and we didn’t do that. But it’s been really cool knowing that when we need it, we have 110-Volt power with some capacity behind it.”
The role aboard is mostly to keep the refrigerator/freezer running through the night, maybe support a few hours of Starlink Mini usage, and keep the charging outlets live for personal electronics. Jackery claims the Explorer 1000 can run a 200-Watt fridge for 12 hours, a 600-Watt coffee maker for an hour and a half, and a 1,200-Watt microwave for .8 hours. Now, one normally wouldn’t run a microwave for almost an hour or a coffee maker for an hour and a half in any given day, but these are just examples that provide an idea of what the unit can handle.
“It’s got enough capacity where you could run a hairdryer on it, a coffee pot,” added Graf. “You could take quite a bit of power out of it, but it’ll run the Starlink for almost 10.5 hours… real nice digital display that shows you what’s going on, how much you’re drawing.”
One useful bit of information we learned the hard way is to power down the battery completely when not in use. The unit has an idle mode but this does have a power draw that will drain the battery to empty over time.
“[Turning the battery completely off] makes pretty good sense, but we didn’t one day,” chuckled Graf. The situation was indeed our fault, as the Explorer 1000 has a prominent digital display that shows the percentage of charge and other pertinent information.
The Jackery Explorer 1000 Takeaway
All in all, the Jackery Explorer 1000 was a handy addition to our trip. For Graf’s onboard electricity puzzle, it was a fitting piece. I can imagine an Explorer 1000 being extra impactful for smaller outboard boats and sailboats, enabling luxuries like ice making during those multiday excursions while providing backup power for that radar you didn’t expect to run in surprise fog. Now you don’t need to fire up your loud generator in the quiet anchorages just to get the coffee brewing—just switch on the Jackery and enjoy the peace for a bit longer.
Remember to charge it up while running during the day, either by onboard alternator/inverter or other means like solar, and you should be able to reliably top off the juice. These solutions could get creative and stay safe with all home projects that involve electricity. That the Explorer 1000 all fits in a small bag that you can take home with you, free of specialty marine electrician expertise, is the cherry on top. It can even be of use during your landbound days when it comes to power tools or as natural disaster preparedness.
For what you get, the price is pretty sweet. An Explorer 1000 v2 Power Station retails at $799 on the Jackery website and is often on sale for $449. The Explorer 1000 with a 200-Watt SolarSaga array is $1,299.
