Battery-Powered Mayhem! (Jackery 300)

[agedhorse]

FYI, the Oupes 600 power station provides essentially twice the power capacity of my Jackery 300. It also weighs twice as much.

Which suggests that there's "no free lunch"

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

FYI, the Oupes 600 power station provides essentially twice the power capacity of my Jackery 300. It also weighs twice as much.

Yup. Trade offs. Mainly bought it for the fridge. It'll run that thing 2-1/2 days from a full charge.

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

Which suggests that there's "no free lunch"

So you're not buyin' lunch then?

 

[Katoosie]

I was thinking about getting something like this a while ago, but its mainly gas. Its kinda weird gas though - for an amp and a battery. Weird stuff!

@edit
Since you like battery powered rigs, heres mine

 

[MarkA]

I was thinking about getting something like this a while ago, but its mainly gas. Its kinda weird gas though - for an amp and a battery. Weird stuff!

@edit
Since you like battery powered rigs, heres mine
View attachment 4764850
View attachment 4764849

Is that a small amp (silver, with two visible knobs) under the board -- enough to power a small cab, if so?

 

[Wasnex]

Is that a small amp (silver, with two visible knobs) under the board -- enough to power a small cab, if so?

Pretty sure that is a PJ Bighead (HA-2)...a headphone amp.

 

[ashok]

there's a weekly farmer's market in the summer that i play at sometimes. this year they moved the market to a place with no electricity. the guy in charge of the market asked me about battery powered amps for the music. i'm going to recommend that he purchase a portable power station like the jackery or the oupes. am i correct in thinking that a jackery 300W power station can handle multiple amps as long as they are each less than 300w? in other words can we run a gk 400rb, and a roland keyboard, and 2 powered speakers simultaneously?

 

[Lance Bunyon]

Last week I saw a solo bass busker in Osaka JP. Dude was a solid bass soloist- playing on a bridge in the canal district who's name escapes me (dumonde or some such).
He appeared to be playing a heavily modified Yamaha PJ 5 into a class D head on a PJB C4 into an interesting pedalboard powered by something that looked identical to this Jackery unit.
I'm also obsessed with DC power for bass amps, although I don't anticipate busking anytime soon.

 

[Wasnex]

there's a weekly farmer's market in the summer that i play at sometimes. this year they moved the market to a place with no electricity. the guy in charge of the market asked me about battery powered amps for the music. i'm going to recommend that he purchase a portable power station like the jackery or the oupes. am i correct in thinking that a jackery 300W power station can handle multiple amps as long as they are each less than 300w? in other words can we run a gk 400rb, and a roland keyboard, and 2 powered speakers simultaneously?

Often when people are outdoors, they crank their gear up into clipping. It takes quite a bit of SPL in the great outdoors to create the perception of loud.

What is the total power requirement of all gear and how long do you want it to play for?

The Jackery 300 can provide 300W continuous and 500W surge and has a capacity of 293Wh (Watt hours). If you sequence the turn on of all gear, you should be able to get sound. Whether the Jackery 300 will power the gear long enough at full power is another matter. My understanding is if the power draw exceeds 500W, the Jackery will turn off.

You can do an estimate of the run time.

Jackery Run Time Simulator (calculator): Jackery Explorer 300 Portable Power Station

Scroll down the page about 1/4 of the way. Enter the power draw of all gear and the Run Time Simulator will give you an estimate.

It looks like they are derating the run time by 20%. Probably better to do a conservative estimate and derate run time by 25%.

Here is the formula to use, if you want to do the calculations yourself.

Estimated run time = (293/average power draw) x 0.75

For example if you require 175W average:

Estimated run time = (293/175) x 0.75 = 1.26 hrs.

I am guessing that's not sufficient run time for a Farmer's Market. It's recommended that you recharge the Jackery before power reserves drops below 15%, which will further reduce available run time.

Another factor is digital gear like keyboards can be finicky about power. The Jackery 300 is spec'ed pure sine and mine puts out 110V. So the keyboard should work, but I would want to test the Jackery with all band gear under playing conditions before taking it public.

My guess is you would be better off with two or possibly three Jackery 300s. However, best to do the calculation using the actual total power draw of the gear you anticipate using.

 

[Redbrangus]

Enter the power draw of all gear...

Everything Was said is valid; calculating the total current draw is the somewhat tricky part. First of all, forget about rated output power of the amps in watts -- it's related, but it's not the number you use to calculate the current draw of the device in question. On the chassis, near where the power cord attaches, most devices have a rated power draw -- this is a derated number, ONE-EIGHTH of the total possible current flow. So you need to multiply this rating by 8 to get the total power draw that's possible. A device that's nominally rated at 80 watts can draw up to 640 watts at peak. This is a big potential problem when you're trying to run multiple devices from a small power supply, since the nature of the music means every device will probably make peak demand at the same time.

I don't know anything about what sort of powered speakers are going to be used, but my instinct is that plugging two of them into a 300-watt power source will last only until the first "Check, one, two" before tripping the circuit breaker for the Jackery. My further instinct is that if you have to stagger the turn-ons to power up your system, there isn't nearly enough reserve capacity to get through the first loud peak.

 

[byacey]

Under continuous power, measured with a steady sine wave, RMS power out should be almost the same as RMS line power in, minus amp inefficiency losses , for a solid state amp.

 

[agedhorse]

Under continuous power, measured with a steady sine wave, RMS power out should be almost the same as RMS line power in, minus amp inefficiency losses , for a solid state amp.

Fortunately, steady state sine wave power is not a real world condition.

 

[ashok]

Enter the power draw of all gear and the Run Time Simulator will give you an estimate.

most devices have a rated power draw -- this is a derated number, ONE-EIGHTH of the total possible current flow. So you need to multiply this rating by 8 to get the total power draw that's possible.

thanks very much for the detailed responses.

on the back of my gk 400rbIII it says:
AVERAGE POWER 185W FULL POWER 500W
on the back of the 100W powered speaker it says:
AC 120V 60Hz 160W

so if i was doing a gig with just bass and vocals using these two pieces of equipment, i can estimate my power needs. i need to know the average power draw.

is my average power draw from these 2 pieces of equipment running simultaneously 185W + 160W = 345W? or is it 345 x 8 = 2760W?

instead of getting 2 jackery 300W's, probably makes more sense to get a jackery 1000w instead, or something similar. i'm pretty sure that will be beyond the budget for this little farmer's market, but i do want to get a clear understanding of the situation.

thanks again for your responses

 

[Wasnex]

thanks very much for the detailed responses.

on the back of my gk 400rbIII it says:
AVERAGE POWER 185W FULL POWER 500W
on the back of the 100W powered speaker it says:
AC 120V 60Hz 160W

so if i was doing a gig with just bass and vocals using these two pieces of equipment, i can estimate my power needs. i need to know the average power draw.

is my average power draw from these 2 pieces of equipment running simultaneously 185W + 160W = 345W? or is it 345 x 8 = 2760W?

instead of getting 2 jackery 300W's, probably makes more sense to get a jackery 1000w instead, or something similar. i'm pretty sure that will be beyond the budget for this little farmer's market, but i do want to get a clear understanding of the situation.

thanks again for your responses

The specs are not completely clear to me, so a certain amount of fudging is required. This is why I suggest being a bit conservative with your estimate. It's better to have more power than you need, than not enough.

For the GK I would base the run time on the Average power requirement. Also I would be mindful that the full power is right at the surge capacity rating of the Jackery 300. This suggest the amp could possibly cause the Jackery 300 to shut down if you crank the amp to clipping with a 4 ohm speaker. So essentially one Jackery 300 is a relatively safe bet for one 400RB as long as you explore the limits of the system and then keep your volume in a safe range. I am able to run my GK 700RB wide open on my Jackery 300, but I am using an 8 ohm speaker so the amp was not making full power.

As far as the speaker power requirements, I suspect 160W is the max power rather than nominal power. You might find more specific specs in the manual. I don't know if this is intended as max RMS or peak.

If I understand, the 8 to 1 power relationship is comparing the nominal RMS power to the Peak power.

I believe the Jackery 300's surge capacity is expressed in RMS Watts rather than peak Watts. 500W RMS = 1,000W peak. If the Surge capacity is a peak rating I don't understand how it makes sense because 500W peak equals 250W RMS, which is less than the 300W RMS "continuous" power the Jackery is rated for. I could be wrong as Jackery does use the term peak power.

As far as whether one bigger power bank is a better solution than 2 or 3 smaller power banks. It depends on how they will be used and how you think.

The regular price of a Jackery 300 is $300 x 3 = $900.

They are currently on sale for $20 off. ​

300W continuous x 3 = 900W
500W surge x 3 = 1500W
293Wh x 3 = 879Wh
7.1lbs x 3 = 21.3lbs

The normal price for a Jackery 1000 is $1100.
1000W continuous
2000W surge
1002Wh
24.5lbs

The 1000 is more expensive, but can supply a bit more power. This could be important if you need to power something requires a lot of surge capacity. You can't link three Jackery 300s together in parallel. The 1000 is also heavier and you have to carry the entire weight. With the 300 you can break the weight into smaller loads. Or you can use each of them in totally different locations (more flexibility/versatility IMHO).

For this situation, I like the idea of having three separate power banks. Each person carries their own power bank. If one fails or runs out of power, you may be able to continue with the remaining two, although there would be reduction in available power. However, it might be safer to run all gear off one power bank and rather than having separate supplies.

Some of this is over my head and maybe @agedhorse will weigh in to offer corrections, clarification, or safety warnings.

 

[agedhorse]

It depends.

 

[byacey]

Fortunately, steady state sine wave power is not a real world condition.

I was just pointing out that there is no free ride. You can't create energy, nor destroy it. What goes in comes back out in one form or other.

 

[agedhorse]

I was just pointing out that there is no free ride. You can't create energy, nor destroy it. What goes in comes back out in one form or other.

With audio amps, duty cycle of the signal is an essential component to the power management.

 

[Redbrangus]

on the back of my gk 400rbIII it says:
AVERAGE POWER 185W FULL POWER 500W
on the back of the 100W powered speaker it says:
AC 120V 60Hz 160W

so if i was doing a gig with just bass and vocals using these two pieces of equipment, i can estimate my power needs. i need to know the average power draw.

is my average power draw from these 2 pieces of equipment running simultaneously 185W + 160W = 345W? or is it 345 x 8 = 2760W?

I'm with @Wasnex that these ratings are confusing, based on my admittedly limited knowledge. 160 watts seems about right for the peak draw for a modern, Class-D "100-watt" amp. I wouldn't think you'd need to consider it to be more than that. And 185 watts is probably a workable number for the G-K, especially if you're not going to be playing it flat out. The important thing is to allow a lot of margin, like 20-25% or more. It would be worth trying out in advance of the date, to reassure yourself that it isn't going to shut itself off at the most inopportune moment. More than once, I've witnessed shows lose power at the absolutely MOST dramatic moment because that was also the moment of peak current demand. The two things are usually not unrelated.

There's something to be said for having several smaller power sources: if one load trips the circuit breaker for its source, the rest of the show doesn't 'go dark' -- something (like the vocal system) could still be powered up. And three smaller battery packs can probably be recharged a lot faster than one larger one. Still, personally, I'd probably opt for one larger one, just because it's tidier and fewer things to deal with. As noted, either option is probably out of budget for this particular situation.

 

[Wasnex]

The important thing is to allow a lot of margin, like 20-25% or more. It would be worth trying out in advance of the date, to reassure yourself that it isn't going to shut itself off at the most inopportune moment.

A key consideration is many people play louder during a performance than during sound check or practice. So for testing, I would make sure and intentionally push the Jackery harder than you expect. Maybe it will take it and maybe it will shut down. If it's going to shut down, I want to have a good idea where the limit is.

I am pretty confident the Jackery 300 is adequate for just my GK 700RB pushing an 8 ohm cab. I pushed the amp to clipping on the Jackery, and it seemed to perform pretty much the same as it does on wall power. The only discernable difference I noted was a bit of hum

I think the Jackery 300 would work with an added keyboard and a pair of 100W powered cabs at modest volume. But I think it will quickly hit the limit if the volume starts creeping up too much.

 

[ashok]

the farmers' market i mentioned earlier went ahead and purchased an EcoFlow Delta mini 1400w portable power station for around $500. i played there with a trio this afternoon. it worked fine, everyone loved the music. yamaha keyboarad, mixing board for the mic, i used my 600w AI clarus. everything ran smoothly but we didn't push it. my gain and level were both at 9 o'clock. the drummer is very good and kept his volume nicely contained. we'll be there again next friday and will probably turn up a bit more. after 2 hours of continuous playing the power supply dropped from 99% to 92%. it said we used 47 wh.