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Compact, lightweight power for historic vehicle events
Most of us attend vehicle club drive days and the occasional all-day show. Having portable power at hand allows you to run a food/drinks fridge while your vehicle is stationary.
Portable fridges are a godsend when you have to cater for historic vehicle events. Rather than ingesting lukewarm drinks and suspect sandwiches, it’s much more pleasant to have cold tucker and bevies at hand.
The problem with car fridges is that they don’t work when the vehicle accessory switch is turned off and that’s where a compact power pack comes into its own.
Power packs used to be heavy, lead-acid-battery devices, but the development of much more compact and efficient lithium battery power packs has changed all that.
We checked out one of the smallest power packs we could find, from EcoFlow. It was a 20 amp-hour model and ideal for running a fridge and recharging electronic devices.
The first thing we noticed about the basic River 2 power pack was how compact and lightweight it was, measuring 245mm x 215mm x 145mm and weighing only 3.5kg. It had an integrated, moulded carry handle that made it very easy to transport.
In the box were 12V and 240V charging cables and the front of the River 2 had USB-A and USB-C outlets; pure sine wave inverter 240V/300W (600W peak) outlet and a 12V cigarette-lighter 8A/100W socket. RRP at the time of testing, in late-2024, was around $350.
Our choice of this small unit was based on our need to operate an Engel 20-litre fridge. Despite its small size and light weight, it would run our fridge as expected, EcoFlow engineers assured us.
Our evaluation began with an assessment of its charging and charge retention capacities. It came with some transit voltage in its lithium ferro-phosphate (LFP) battery pack and we charged it to 99-percent in a few minutes. Over a two-week period we monitored its charge levels, with no load on it and observed that it lost around 10-percent charge every day or so.
Initially, we thought this could be a problem, but EcoFlow pointed out that the River 2 would recharge in record time, so there would be no problem with that.
Indeed, we found that the River 2 could be fully charged from almost zero charge in less than an hour, using the supplied mains charging cable. It was also possible to charge it from 70-percent to 99-percent in about seven minutes!
We connected the River 2 to our Engel fridge after loading the fridge with pre-cooled drink bottles and cans, thus simulating arrival at a destination with the battery full and the fridge already pre-cooled by some driving, using power from the car’s alternator.
In an ambient temperature of 15-18 degrees C the tiny River 2 power pack maintained a four-degree-temperature for 16 hours, by which time the River 2 battery level was at 18 percent and still powering the fridge.
Subsequently, the River 2 was disconnected from the fridge, which ran from a cigarette lighter socket while we drove the car and the River 2 was at full charge after two hours of car driving, plugged into another vehicle socket.
We’re now waiting for warmer weather to see how it copes with higher ambients. So far, so good.
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