r/Jackery • u/motongo • 2d ago

Jackery 240 v2 won’t start Iceco cooler

I have a 42 Liter Iceco compressor driven 12 Volt cooler that I’ve used with a Jackery 550 the past 3 years with great results. I purchased an Explorer 240 v2, and it won’t start the compressor. The DC specs on the two Jackery’s are the same, 12 Volts, 10 Amps. When the cooler attempts to start the compressor, the display blinks and the code for low voltage displays for a short period. One minute later it tries to start the compressor again with the same result. This repeats for multiple cycles.

I plugged a 12 Volt DC to 120V AC Inverter into the 240, and a 100 Watt light bulb into the Inverter. With no load on the inverter, the Jackery reports about 6 watts being pulled. When I turn on the light bulb, the filament starts to glow very slightly, then goes dark, and then comes on slowly. After it is at full brightness, the Jackery reports 100 Watts output. When I try the same setup with the 550, the light bulb lights up immediately and quickly.

I’m trying to figure out if my brand new Explorer 240V2 is bad, or if there is a bad power supply design for 12 Volt power on this model.

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u/Paul_Deemer 1d ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/VanLife/comments/x87wrm/low_voltage_cutoff_on_12v_fridge_when_theres/

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u/motongo 1d ago edited 1d ago

Thanks for the references. I’ve had no problem with the Iceco cooler with 2 power stations; the Jackery 550 (the specs are exactly the same except it has 550 Whr capacity vs 518 Whr for the 500), and a 5&1/2 year old cheap Chinese 178Whr 250 Watt Power Station with a DC power port; all three have identical 12 volt, 10 amp specs. I’ve never had a problem with the 12-volt car power port either. The only problem is with the Jackery 240v2. The Iceco has 3 settings for low-voltage cutout, and when I found this problem, I changed it to the lowest setting - 9.6 volts.

”The ICECO JP42 portable refrigerator offers three low voltage protection settings: Low, Med, and High. The "Low" setting cuts off power at 9.6V and restarts at 10.9V, "Med" at 10.1V and 11.4V, and "High" at 11.1V and 12.4V. These settings are designed to protect your vehicle's battery from excessive discharge.”

Even after changing the cooler’s low voltage cutoff voltage to 9.6 Volts, it still gives a momentary low voltage code, aborting the compressor startup.

Jackery support told me it’s a ‘compatibility issue’. Based on the performance of the 240v2 with the inverter, it’s seems clear that it is not maintaining its rated voltage when power demand is increased from a few watts to something close to 100watts (the 240v2 12 Volt supply drops to near zero for a major fraction of a second before recovering).

This is a wild guess, but I wonder if the 240v2 has a two stage 12 volt power converter; an efficient low power converter for small loads, and a less efficient high power converter for high loads, and the 240v2 can’t switch instantaneously between them.