Portable power station for charging an e-bike

How much power an e-bike charger uses

An e-bike battery is a charge load: what counts is the battery's size in watt-hours (Wh), the charger's output in watts and how long the charger runs. These are the makers' figures:

• Rad Power Bikes RadRunner Plus: 624 Wh battery (13 Ah). Rad lists the charger as 48 V DC, 2 A, which is 96 W of output, per Rad Power Bikes.
• Aventon Level.3 Commuter: 733 Wh (36 V, 20 Ah), charger output 42 V at 4 A (168 W), 5 hours to charge, per Aventon.
• Lectric XP 3.0: 500 Wh (48 V, 10.4 Ah) and 4 to 6 hours to charge, per Lectric's battery page; charger output 54.6 V at 2.0 A (109 W), per Lectric's charger page.
• Specialized Turbo Vado 4.0: 710 Wh (U2-710 battery) and a 42 V, 4 A charger (168 W), per Specialized; 5 hours to charge, per the Vado user manual.
• Segway Ninebot Max G2 scooter: 551 Wh, built-in charger rated 122 W of output (42 V, 2.9 A), about 5 hours to charge, per Segway.

Each of these chargers plugs into a standard AC outlet, so on a power station it runs from the AC outlets and the station's inverter stays on for the whole charge.

How many charges a station gives

The site counts 82% of a station's rated Wh as usable. While a bike charges from an AC outlet, the inverter also draws its own power for every hour of the charge: 10 W on a station under 1,000 Wh, 15 W from 1,000 to 1,499 Wh and 18 W from 1,500 Wh. These are Jackery's calculator figures, applied to every brand; the runtime method shows the formula.

Full charges from a 1,024 Wh station and from a 2,048 Wh station:

• Lectric XP 3.0 (500 Wh): 1.42 and 2.76
• Segway Ninebot Max G2 (551 Wh): 1.34 and 2.62
• Rad RadRunner Plus (624 Wh): 1.31 and 2.62
• Specialized Turbo Vado 4.0 (710 Wh): 1.07 and 2.10
• Aventon Level.3 (733 Wh): 1.04 and 2.04

One full charge needs 683 Wh of rated capacity for the Lectric and 955 Wh for the Aventon. The table below shows every model, rounded down to whole charges.

Worked example: one bike, two phones and a lantern

The sizing tool at the top of this page starts with a day's charging on a bike trip: one full charge of an Aventon Level.3 (733 Wh), two charges of a Samsung Galaxy S25 phone (15.4 Wh each) and one charge of a Goal Zero Lighthouse 600 lantern (18.98 Wh).

The phones and lantern charge from USB ports, which skip the inverter. The bike charger runs on AC for 5 hours, so the inverter's draw is added for those hours. The day comes to 858 Wh, and divided by 82% it needs 1,046 Wh of rated capacity.

• 1,024 Wh stations (EcoFlow DELTA 3, Anker SOLIX C1000 Gen 2 and others): 98% of the day, just short.
• Jackery Explorer 1000 v2 (1,070 Wh): 1.02 days.
• BLUETTI AC180 (1,152 Wh): 1.10 days.
• 2,048 Wh stations: 1.92 days.

Add a second bike, a Lectric XP 3.0, charging at the same time, and the day needs 1,696 Wh: the tool counts the inverter for the longer charge, Lectric's 6 hours. The EcoFlow DELTA 3 Max (2,048 Wh) covers it with 1.21 days and the Dabbsson DBS2300 Plus (2,330 Wh) with 1.37 days.

What changes the real number of charges

The counts on this page come from the battery sizes and the inverter's draw. Three things move the real number:

• Charger heat. An e-bike charger turns some of the power it draws into heat, so the battery receives less than the station sends. The site's data has no efficiency figure for these chargers, so the counts do not subtract it. A count just above one, such as 1.04 Aventon Level.3 charges from a 1,024 Wh station, may fall short of a full charge.
• Charge time. The inverter draws power for every hour the charger runs. Lectric gives 4 to 6 hours, and the calculator uses 6. No charge time for the Rad RadRunner Plus is in the site's data, so its count includes one hour of inverter draw; a 96 W charger takes longer than that to fill 624 Wh, so its real count is lower.
• Starting level. The counts assume the battery starts empty. Topping up a partly charged battery takes less energy than a full charge, so you get more top-ups than full charges.

Charging e-bikes on road trips and camping

On a trip you charge the bike from the station, then recharge the station from a wall outlet or solar panels. These are the makers' figures for the four picks above:

• Jackery Explorer 1000 v2: full in 1 hour in Emergency Super Charge mode, which you turn on in Jackery's app; 400 W solar input; 23.8 lb.
• Anker SOLIX C1000 Gen 2: full in 49 minutes at 1,600 W in UltraFast Charging mode; 600 W solar input; 24.9 lb.
• EcoFlow DELTA 3 Max: 0 to 80% in 68 minutes at 1,800 W; 500 W solar input; 44.8 lb.
• Dabbsson DBS2300 Plus: 0 to 80% in 1.5 hours; 800 W solar input; 58.15 lb.

Charge phones, lights and headlamps from the USB ports, which skip the inverter, and keep the AC outlets for the bike charger. To charge two bikes at once you need two free AC outlets; every model on this site has at least two.

For a 12 V cooler on the same trip, see power stations for camping, and for a camper, power stations for RVs.

1 kWh or 2 kWh: which size fits

• One bike, charged once between station recharges: a 1 kWh-class station. The 1,024 Wh models give 1.04 to 1.42 charges of the bikes on this page, and the 1,024 to 1,152 Wh models weigh 23.8 to 35.27 lb.
• Two bikes, or two charges of one bike between station recharges: a 2 kWh-class station. Two Aventon Level.3 charges need 2,007 Wh of rated capacity, which the 2,042 to 2,330 Wh stations cover (1.02 to 1.16 days). Two Lectric XP 3.0 charges need 1,439 Wh, which the Jackery Explorer 1500 v2 covers (1.04 days). The 2 kWh-class models weigh 31.97 to 58.15 lb.

If you might add a bike later, some models take extra batteries: Anker lists the SOLIX C2000 Gen 2 as expandable to 4,096 Wh, EcoFlow the DELTA 3 Plus to 5,000 Wh and Dabbsson the DBS2300 Plus to 8,330 Wh.

To compare cost, the price per Wh table ranks every model by price per Wh, and the sizing tool sorts the models that fit the same way. The full list of power stations groups every model by size, and each model's page links the maker's source for every spec.

More ways to size a power station

• Portable power station for camping: what size you need
• Portable power station for an RV: what size you need
• What size power station you need for Starlink