Jackery Explorer 5000 Plus impressions

I just received the Jackery 5000 and want to share my impressions. I am pleased with the ease of use of the Android app, size of the unit, and it should meet my goal of supplying 24+ hours of backup power for a small load when I am not at home. But there are some surprises.

First, I am surprised by the power consumption. I use a Kill-A-Watt power meter to measure power draw. When running in Backup UPS Mode (which I believe bypasses the inverter) the Jackery is drawing 155 watts from the wall, just to supply a 105 watt load. Where are those 50 watts going? This seems much too high for the embedded computer. [Edit: more careful testing suggests 38 watts.]

Second, the UPS mode seems to be buggy. For example, I disconnect wall power, wait a minute, and then reconnect it. The Jackery notices both events (you can hear relays clicking), but it does not resume drawing power from the wall. If you toggle the AC output button on the Jackery it will start drawing from the wall again, but that's far from ideal. Hopefully this will be resolved soon with a firmware update. The current firmware version is reported as 1.0.

The other use that I have in mind is manual whole house backup during an extended outage. Because I live in a high wildfire risk area, our power company will preemptively turn off electricity if there are high winds and dry conditions. These outages can last days at a time. As a consolation prize, the power company installed a "Backup Power Transfer Meter" which basically puts a generator inlet right into the electric meter. It's a custom connector at the meter, but the other end of the cable goes into the Jackery's NEMA 14-30R. I've heard that the Jackery can supply 60A surge, which is hopefully enough to start the 240V water boost pump. It will be nice having water pressure during an outage. Due to the nature of the Backup Power Transfer Meter, this cannot be tested until there is an actual power outage.

Besides that surge current, the main reason I bought the Jackery 5000 was ease of replenishment. The 5 KWh of stored energy is a terrific buffer, but not enough to sustain us through an extended outage. Due to shade I cannot replenish with solar panels. But I do have an electric vehicle. I purchased a cable from Amazon where one end goes into an electric car's cigarette lighter, and the other end connects to the Jackery's low voltage solar input port. This works and transfers 100 watts continuously. I am also considering a device from a company called VortiPower that should allow me to extract energy significantly more quickly from the vehicle and feed it to the Jackery; probably 1500 watts. That would be very convenient. I do not have that device in hand.

We'll see how it goes, but I'm looking forward to having a significantly easier time during the next outage.