A Hundred Emails and an Open Shore

Between the Mountains and the Ocean

Andy Ortiz works eight to ten hours a day. Sometimes fourteen. Sometimes sixteen.

He manages IT systems for a third-party logistics company in Redlands, California, which is about an hour from Los Angeles, an hour from the beach, and an hour from the mountains.

His work doesn't stop when the warehouse does. Customers on the East Coast start their day before he's had coffee. Sites run 24 hours a day, and escalation calls don't wait until Monday. 

"I get a hundred plus emails a day, even on the weekends," he says. "I can't really get away from my phone. I have some sites that my team manages that run twenty-four seven, so if they have a major issue, I have to have my phone with me."

A dead phone, for Andy, is not just an inconvenience. It is a liability.

But the activity is the point. After a week at a screen, he needs a reason to leave the house. He hikes the trails near his home. He drives to Santa Monica or Laguna before the traffic builds. In winter, he heads up to Big Bear to catch the snow.

A Small Unit, a Long Day

The search for a power solution began practically.

Andy wanted something reliable, something that wouldn't break the bank, and something small enough to slide into a beach bag without thinking about it. He spent time comparing brands based on reliability ratings, price points, and battery recall histories. Other brands he'd looked at were running two to three hundred dollars more for similar output. Some had sent him recall notices.

He landed on a Jackery Explorer 1000 Portable Power Station and took it to the beach.

"I was able to plug in multiple phones and also plug in my speaker to keep it charged while we were at the beach," he says. "We were there well into the afternoon, maybe six or seven o'clock, and I still had power left on all our devices, and I still had power left on the actual unit itself."

There were seven or eight of them that day, everyone plugging in for a little power here and there. The Jackery Portable Power Station barely flinched.

"For how small that unit was, how much power it provided, it really did make an impression on me."

That was the beginning. When it came time to buy something bigger, he already knew where to look. He picked up the Jackery Explorer 1500 v2 Portable Power Station at Costco.

The Jumper That Almost Paid for Itself

A nephew's second birthday changed the math.

Andy's family wanted a bouncy castle for the party. But instead of running an extension cord from the house, Andy plugged the jumper into the Jackery Explorer 1500 v2 and connected a Jackery SolarSaga 100 Air Solar Panel to keep it charged through the day.

It worked. The jumper ran without interruption. The solar panel kept pace.

Then someone asked about renting the jumper. Then someone else did. A hundred dollars a day, and Andy sets it up with the Jackery included and without extension cords or power running from the house.

"I've run the math," he says. "We've made about a thousand off of it so far." The jumper and the unit together cost around twelve hundred dollars. It has nearly paid for itself.

What Power Unlocks

The Jackery Explorer 1500 v2 changed what Andy could bring on a trip.

"It's allowed me to expand out what kind of devices I can bring," he says. "Prior to this, we were really limited. I can't bring that because I can't get power for it. That's no longer a concern."

The list of what gets plugged in now is long. Electric hot plates and kettles on overnight fishing trips, so mornings become bacon and eggs instead of cold sandwiches. A projector and sound bar in the backyard, a sheet strung between poles, and whatever movie the kids have requested that week. When friends come over, he'll plug in his DJ and entertainment system with speakers, lights, whatever the evening needs, without running anything back to a wall outlet. 

On fishing trips, he runs a portable WiFi hotspot off the Jackery product so everyone can tether to a real signal. His best friend uses the power for sonar equipment. The kids get a travel monitor and a small gaming system while the adults fish. Nobody runs out of anything.

"It kind of takes the stress away," he says. "Everybody lives on their phone nowadays. Even though you'd like to get away from it, that's the purpose of going to the beach, right?"

The Day the Power Went Out

Last summer, the city shut off power to Andy's neighborhood for several hours, which was a planned maintenance on a transformer.

His brother had a newborn.

Four or five hours without power in a California summer, with an infant, is not a minor inconvenience. It requires a plan.

They plugged a mini-fridge into the Jackery product to keep the baby's milk cold. A small air conditioner was put in the room to manage the heat. The solar panel went outside to keep the battery recharged during the outage.

"Having a newborn and not having power in the middle of summer kind of is a deal breaker," Andy says. "They were able to keep the milk cold and the baby cool."

Why It Stays in the Bag

Andy has owned enough power banks to know what most of them do after a few months sitting in a backpack.

Before trips, he charges his non-Jackery power banks the night before, because he's pulled them out after a month and found them at zero too many times. Other brands have sent him recall notices about faulty batteries. He checks, charges, and prepares.

He's never done that with his Jackery.

"I've gone a few months in between trips where I've needed it, and I pull it out. It's still a hundred percent. I've never had to worry about it not being charged or not being ready."

"I know that if I have it and I need to use it, it's going to be there," he says.

What Comes Next

Andy has one item on his wishlist: an electric cooler he could take fishing or to the beach without dealing with ice. He's been waiting to see if Jackery would go there first.

The philosophy runs deeper than a single purchase. At home, Andy made a point of buying only solar-powered security cameras for his house without wiring or grid dependence, just sunlight keeping them charged through the day and running through the night. 

"I just screw them in, connect them to WiFi, and they get sun all day long," he says. "I don't have to worry about them dying on me." It's the same instinct that drew him to Jackery: a preference for systems that take care of themselves. That doesn't require babysitting, refilling, or remembering.

He'd had enough experience with gas generators at a previous job, where his hazmat certification meant he was the one dispatched to run them. "They're really, really noisy and very smelly," he says. "You're constantly refilling them, keeping them topped up." The electric alternative was obvious once he found the right brand.

The Jackery product sits in the bag. The bag goes wherever Andy goes. And whatever comes next, a beach day, a fishing trip, a backyard movie night that never quite reaches the ending, it will be powered.

That much, at least, he doesn't have to think about anymore.

Note：The Jackery Explorer 1000 is currently sold out on the U.S. official website. For a similar experience with updated performance and features, explore the latest Jackery HomePower 1000 v2.