hey folks this is jr with diy prepper welcome to the channel and today we are going to be taking a look at the jackery solar generator 1000 and also talk about the ways that preppers could realistically use something like this in both short-term emergencies as well as more long-term disaster situations and i would like to thank jackery for sending this to us today the jackery solar generator 1000 consists of the jackery explorer 1000 power station and two solar saga 100 watt solar panels along with everything that you’ll need to hook all of that up so the jackery explorer 1000 it has a capacity of 1002 watt hours that’s the amount of power that it can hold inside of its batteries and then it can handle 1000 running watts and 2 000 surge watts so that’s going to be the amount of stuff that you can power with it at once and the power station weighs just over 22 pounds comes with a nice integrated handle on top so what that means is it’s going to be easy to move around where you need it and also if you need to take it with you in a bug out that’s going to allow you to have a reliable power source with you wherever you go the power station has three ac plugs one 12-volt car style plug two usbc ports and two usb a ports one of those is a fast charge port and the explorer 1000 also has a couple of other little features that are kind of nice it has a flashlight on the side here which i mean it’s not going to be as bright as your normal edc line that’s not going to be as portable but if you’re in a situation where you don’t have access to your primary edc light or somebody else is using it and you need to set this up get things plugged into it then you can use that light to provide a little bit of illumination to the area that you’re working in and also it has rubber feet on the bottom which are anti-slip so that’s going to protect any surface that you set it on as well as prevent this from being able to just slide off real easily now the solar saga panels weigh a little bit over 10 pounds each and they’re rated for 100 watts one thing that i really like about these panels is that in addition to being able to recharge the power station they also have ports on the back that you can use to recharge usb devices directly so if you’re in a situation where maybe this is already powered up but you have something like a battery bank or flashlight or even a cell phone that uses a little bit more juice instead of using what this has go ahead set up the panel out in the yard just plug that in directly and that’ll allow you to save some energy in this for other devices that are maybe more important and that set of two panels if you have enough sun should be able to recharge the explorer 1000 from zero to 100 percent in eight hours and you can also recharge this a couple other ways as well you can use the ac adapter to charge the power station either from a wall outlet or a generator and you should be able to go from zero to a hundred percent in around seven hours that way and you can also charge it from the 12 volt port in your car and that’ll take around 14 hours to charge from zero percent but that’s nice if you’re using this car camping or if you’re having to bug out you can charge this up as you’re going down the road and the generator comes with all of these cords it comes with the ac power adapter the 12 volt car port adapter the y-shaped parallel cable along with a nice little zipper bag to keep all of those cables organized and while the power station does not come with a cover or a bag you can purchase one separately and i do highly recommend that because these things i mean any type of solar generator that you get it’s not going to be cheap and you want to be able to protect that from little bumps dings and dust if you’re storing it long term so that bag will do a good job keeping it safe from all those things it’s pretty well padded and it also comes with a separate compartment that you can use to store your cables and any other accessories or items that you want to keep with the generator so hooking up the solar panels and the power station is pretty easy if you know what you’re doing and have everything set out already you can do the whole process in less than two minutes so set up the panels by unfolding them and opening the kickstands and the kickstands are just sewn into the panels and are held in place with a velcro overall i really like how these panels are designed they’re rigid and easy to move around and since they’re so flat and they have nice handles it’s actually possible to carry both of them in one hand if you have big enough hands then after you get those set up remove the cords from the zipper pouch on the back of the panels and connect them to the y-shaped parallel cable once you do that plug the parallel cable into the power station and it should begin charging now since this power station can support 1000 running watts and up to 2000 surge watts that means that you’re going to have no problem running smaller devices but it can also handle some larger appliances as well probably the most useful one for me and my family is our box freezer and the good thing about running a box freezer is if it’s full and everything in there is already frozen it’s going to do a good job helping keep itself pretty cool this isn’t gonna have to work all that hard so you should be able to keep it going for probably two or three days before having to charge the power station back up it was also able to handle my refrigerator which it’s not going to be able to run that at for as long of a time just because refrigerators run more and if it’s a side by side it’s going to use more power than say something like a small box freezer like what i have but that’s good in situations where the power goes out you think it might come back on within a short period of time you don’t want to mess with the gas generator then you can just plug it into there and keep your stuff from spoiling it’ll also be able to run fans for several hours and it was even able to run my vacuum cleaner and i know that that’s probably not something that you’re gonna be running a whole lot during a long-term emergency situation but i was curious to see if he could do it and it did so that was pretty cool it can also do a good job running smaller kitchen appliances things like crock pots and then even smaller microwaves and another thing that i really like to use a solar generator for is to keep rechargeable batteries up and going because i have things like power tool batteries that i use to power lights and a fan and i also have some rechargeable double a and aaa eneloop batteries for other devices i’m looking into getting me some rechargeable d cells to power things like other lights and fans and this having a 1002 watt hour capacity you’re probably not going to be in too many situations where you go without sun for so long that this isn’t going to be able to keep up with your needs of keeping those small devices running and this was even able to run a small air compressor which is useful because you’ll be able to keep your tires inflated as well as use small pneumatic tools things like staplers nailers and then a lot of other things there are a ton of air tools out there and this would be able to at least run a small compressor so that you could be able to use those at least in limited spurts so now let’s talk about the practical applications for a generator like this for preppers in say a short-term emergency and one way i like to use something like this like if a transformer blows or a limb falls on the power line and i know it’s not going to be too terribly long before the utility company is out to help fix that then i might just use this plug in something like my refrigerator in just wait and see if the outage only lasts a couple hours then that’ll keep things in my fridge from spoiling and also be able to handle maybe a couple lights or something like that and if the power outage lasts longer than i expect it to then i can always hook up the generator roll it around the house and get it up and going but for something just you know don’t last a few hours i’m not going to want to mess with getting the gas generator hooked up to its battery fueled up put in position and then ready to go it’s just too much of a hassle this is very convenient because i might not have to do that and then also let’s say i’m at work and a power outage happens this actually happened a couple weeks ago my wife was at home with the baby and the power went out and she had a crock pot meal going well my wife she’s in good health but she’s cute and compact so her getting the generator rolled around the house might have been a little bit too much to ask especially when she was wrestling a toddler at the same time so having something like this allowed her to plug the crock pot in and we didn’t lose that crock pot meal because we had solar generators ready to go and also it is fully capable of powering larger devices at least for a relatively short amount of time like you’ll be able to power things like i said your box freezer your refrigerator if you’re somebody that has a cpap machine you’re going to be able to just put this by the bed and it should if it has a full charge lasts through at least one night so you’re not going to have to you know plug in the generator if you don’t have like something like a transfer switch and run extension cords all through your house to get that cpap up and running just plug it into this and you’re good to go now when it comes to more long-term emergency situations power stations like this do still have some uses while you’re not going to be able to keep large appliances and large items running absolutely non-stop you will be able to power up things like rechargeable batteries to keep small devices up and running pretty much indefinitely and it will also allow you to run specialized devices things like diffusers and humidifiers when you need to say your kid gets sick you can just plug in the humidifier just like normal and since those don’t really use a whole lot of power it should last all night easily with power left over if you’re into essential oils a diffuser at least the one we have uses even less power so you should be able to run those as well and another good thing about a solar generator like this is it’s going to be able to keep cordless tool batteries charged pretty much indefinitely and that has a lot of uses and especially a long term emergency situation you’re going to be able to make repairs to your home and also if you’re somebody that’s particularly good at building things or making repairs if the situation lasts long enough for some sort of new economic system to develop that’s going to be a skill that you can use to trade for things that you and your family need kind of like your job now you might not be making money but you could be earning canned goods or squirrel or fuel whatever the case may be so while this won’t be able to run something like a circular saw because those can pull like 3000 watts on startup it will be able to run something like a cordless circular saw because all you got to be able to do is charge up those batteries and this will have no problem doing that so a lot of people ask is a solar generator better or worse than a traditional gas or diesel generator and the truth is each one has their own advantages they have their own disadvantages but they do work extremely well in tandem with one another and they can even have a symbiotic relationship of sorts where if you have a period of time that you’re not getting a lot of sunlight you can use the gas generator to recharge this and if the gas generator is electric start and its battery gets a little too low then you can plug its battery maintainer into this and you can get that battery up to the appropriate level where you can use that electric start again and you can also kind of have a tag team type setup where if you have a large enough generator you can hook it up to a transfer switch in your home and it can run things like your furnace central air conditioning and larger appliances where you use this to run smaller devices smaller appliances power sensitive electronics because a lot of times those gas generators unless they’re an inverter type you kind of run the risk of damaging things like if you want to keep your smartphone running because of those sensitive electronics inside the gas generator sometimes their their power fluctuates and that’s not really good for sensitive electronics and one important thing to remember is no matter how much fuel you’re able to store eventually you are going to run out so while you can use that fuel to run larger devices maybe in the opening stages of a long-term disaster type situation eventually that fuel is going to go away but by having a solar power solution such as this one you’re going to be able to charge things like lights communications equipment if you have a ham radio you’re going to be able to keep that up and running also flashlights things along those lines because if you read books like prepper’s long-term survival guide by jim cobb or how to survive the end of the world as we know it by james wesley rawls both of those books mention solar power now maybe they’re not mentioning this specific device but both of those books consider solar power to be a very important part of a long-term energy plan a couple weeks ago i released a video showing how the solar generator would be useful in a winter power outage and you can find that by clicking the card here you all have a good
Video Tags: Prepper,Prepping,DIY Prepper,Jackery 1000 Review,Jackery Review,Solar Generator,How to survive a power outage,Grid collapse,TEOTWAWKI
Video Duration: 00:14:36
