Tech review: Jackery and Red Cross want you to be ready

Jim Rossman, Tribune News Service on Nov 11, 2026

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So, you’re sitting in your living room watching TV and the power goes out.

What goes through your mind? Uncertainty.

You start by turning on your phone’s flashlight and looking for that candle lighter so you can light some candles and you start thinking about spending the rest of the evening in the dark.

You’re hoping the outage is a short one, but what if it’s not?

After a while, you start wondering about the food in your refrigerator. If you don’t open the doors more than necessary, you should be good for up to about four hours.

But you’re smarter than that. You’re prepared. You walk over to the closet and pick up your portable power station and set it on the floor next to the fridge.

I’ve been reviewing the Jackery HomePower 2000 Plus v2 Red Cross Edition ($1,299, Amazon.com) and it brings tremendous peace of mind knowing you have options.

The HomePower 2000 Plus is a big rechargeable battery with 2,048 watt-hours of power that is enough to keep your refrigerator powered up for more than 24 hours.

Hopefully, that’s enough time for the power to come back on, but you should have a plan for recharging it during extended outages.

If you can drive it to a place with power, you can recharge it in as little as 1.5 hours from AC power. If the sun is out, you can charge from 800 watts of solar panels in about 3.2 hours.

Jackery still uses DC8020 barrel connectors for its solar inputs, so you’ll need adapters if you’re using non-Jackery solar panels.

The power station uses LiFePo4 batteries which are rated for more than 6,000 charge cycles, so you can charge up and use the HomePower 2000 Plus every day for more than 16 years and still have up to 70% of the battery capacity.

The power station can provide up to 2,400 watts of electricity from its four AC outlets. That’s enough to power almost anything you can plug in. It also has two USB-C ports and one USB-A port to keep your portable devices powered up. It also has one 12v DC output.

The HomePower 2000 Plus v2 has a port on the side to connect up to five 2,000 wH expansion batteries for a total capacity of up to 12 kilowatts of power.

Connectivity

The HomePower 2000 Plus v2 uses the Jackery app to unlock some pretty special features. It can connect via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

The most intriguing app feature is called Priority Routing.

The four AC ports are separated into two pairs that can be controlled by the app. You can set priorities in the app to limit or turn off power to either side. You might have your refrigerator on one side and your lamps or TV on the other side. You could prioritize the fridge and tell the power station to turn off the non-essential outlets if the battery power dips below 50%, for example.

You can also use the app to set up TOU (time of use), which lets you set specific charging hours to take advantage of reduced energy costs.

Jackery also has a feature called Storm Alert. Through the app, Jackery will send a message to your power station of impending severe weather and tell the power station to charge itself to 100%. A lot of power station users limit their battery charge level to 80% to improve battery longevity. The Storm Alert feature makes sure your power station is fully charged when you need it.

It’s small, but readable color screen shows remaining battery percentage and charge and discharge rates, as well as all the charging mode information and estimated time until the batteries are depleted.

Easy to carry

The HomePower 2000 Plus v2 is one of the smaller 2,000W power stations I’ve used. It weighs 41.5 pounds and measures 10 inches by 10.7 inches by 14.4 inches, and a folding handle lets you easily carry it with one hand.

Power station weight is really coming down as batteries evolve. Jackery says the HomePower 2000 Plus v2 weighs about 21 pounds less than its previous model.

Being ready

I want to talk about being ready.

It’s one thing to have a power station on hand to use when the electricity goes out, but being ready to use it is something you should plan for before you need it.

Most kitchens have their refrigerator power outlets behind the fridge. This means someone has to pull the fridge out from the wall far enough to reach the plug. You’ll also need to see if the refrigerator’s power cord is long enough to reach your power station. Do yourself a favor and buy an appliance extension cord before your next power outage.

UPC mode

Many power stations, including this one, can be used as an uninterruptable power supply. This means you could keep the Jackery plugged into the wall and your fridge plugged into the Jackery and know the battery will automatically keep the fridge powered on if the electricity goes out.

Red Cross Edition

Jackery has partnered with the American Red Cross to co-brand a trio of portable power stations called the HomePower Emergency Pro series that feature Red Cross logos and a vivid red outer case. Jackery makes a donation to the Red Cross for every unit sold.