This is a review and measurements of the PurePower 3000 AC Regenerator and Battery Back up. It was kindly drop shipped to me from the company in Canada. I am not sure of its cost. Old price lists show it at US $5000.
The display seems old school but it works and is informative in showing the input/output voltage and battery capacity. The buttons are not intuitive to use but you can figure it out.
Member who purchased this lives in EU so ordered this unit for 240 volt operation:
This presented a lot of challenges in testing it in America with 120 volt. One I anticipated which was how to feed it 240. I purchased a transformer to step up our voltage to 240. What I didn't anticipate was how to load it up with 240. Turns out I didn't have to go that far. See the measurements below.
I should note the unit is rather light (relative to its size) which to me, indicated it might have switching power supplies.
PurePower 3000 AC Regenerator Measurements
As usual, let's start with quality of our AC but this time run through the 240 transformer:
As with other AC products I test, I use a differential probe with brings the voltage down by a factor of 100. So the 2.459 is really 245.9 volts. The tops of AC waveform are flattened, showing that our mains is loaded. That causes the distortion spectrum you see in top right with worst case spike around -32 dB, resulting in SINAD of similar amount. In percentage terms, it is 2.7% as indicated.
I then switched to try and measure the same thing from the output of PurePower 3000. That was nearly impossible as the Audio Precision analyzer would keep losing the trigger which would corrupt just about everything in the dashboard. I did manage to get a couple of good measurement cycles which I captured:
I was still bothered by the instability of the measurements. Tried many things but nothing would resolve it. Then I guessed that maybe there is high frequency noise in the output of 3000 so added an input filter to AP setup. That sharply reduced the trigger loss. It was then that I noticed the peak at the right edge of the FFT spectrum. So I went the other way, and widened the bandwidth. This is what I saw:
To dig further, I went higher yet and captured the output both with it running on AC input and also on its batteries (with mains cable disconnected):
For sanity check, I captured the output of the 240 transformer by itself:
It too has some spikes but they are much lower level and are not harmonic or related to the spikes we see with the 3000.
I didn't see any point in testing further. Afterall, audiophiles buy these types of products to reduce noise. Here, the 3000 is manufacture its own noise, albeit, just above the audible band.
Conclusions
First, let me acknowledge the willingness of company to be send a product knowing full well the type of magnifying glass we put it under. Company's point of view is that there are people with much worse mains distortion than me and may be helped with this type of product. My measurements show that distortion is reduced by a factor of 2 with my input signal. I suspect then, it accomplishes what they said to me.
Alas, I think audiophiles buy these products and expect some level of purity. The new ultrasonic noise that the 3000 generates likely will not be acceptable to them.
Where we net out is that if you need battery back up, then the 3000 can act as that while producing cleaner power than mains. The high frequency noise that it generates will likely be filtered out by the power supply in your audio gear.
FYI, I plan to test the so called "solar generators" that are so popular these days to see how clean their output is. They may provide an option and alternative to this product.
Personally I have no need for what PurePower 3000 produces so can't recommend it. But very much appreciate company's cooperation.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The display seems old school but it works and is informative in showing the input/output voltage and battery capacity. The buttons are not intuitive to use but you can figure it out.
Member who purchased this lives in EU so ordered this unit for 240 volt operation:
This presented a lot of challenges in testing it in America with 120 volt. One I anticipated which was how to feed it 240. I purchased a transformer to step up our voltage to 240. What I didn't anticipate was how to load it up with 240. Turns out I didn't have to go that far. See the measurements below.
I should note the unit is rather light (relative to its size) which to me, indicated it might have switching power supplies.
PurePower 3000 AC Regenerator Measurements
As usual, let's start with quality of our AC but this time run through the 240 transformer:
As with other AC products I test, I use a differential probe with brings the voltage down by a factor of 100. So the 2.459 is really 245.9 volts. The tops of AC waveform are flattened, showing that our mains is loaded. That causes the distortion spectrum you see in top right with worst case spike around -32 dB, resulting in SINAD of similar amount. In percentage terms, it is 2.7% as indicated.
I then switched to try and measure the same thing from the output of PurePower 3000. That was nearly impossible as the Audio Precision analyzer would keep losing the trigger which would corrupt just about everything in the dashboard. I did manage to get a couple of good measurement cycles which I captured:
I was still bothered by the instability of the measurements. Tried many things but nothing would resolve it. Then I guessed that maybe there is high frequency noise in the output of 3000 so added an input filter to AP setup. That sharply reduced the trigger loss. It was then that I noticed the peak at the right edge of the FFT spectrum. So I went the other way, and widened the bandwidth. This is what I saw:
To dig further, I went higher yet and captured the output both with it running on AC input and also on its batteries (with mains cable disconnected):
For sanity check, I captured the output of the 240 transformer by itself:
It too has some spikes but they are much lower level and are not harmonic or related to the spikes we see with the 3000.
I didn't see any point in testing further. Afterall, audiophiles buy these types of products to reduce noise. Here, the 3000 is manufacture its own noise, albeit, just above the audible band.
Conclusions
First, let me acknowledge the willingness of company to be send a product knowing full well the type of magnifying glass we put it under. Company's point of view is that there are people with much worse mains distortion than me and may be helped with this type of product. My measurements show that distortion is reduced by a factor of 2 with my input signal. I suspect then, it accomplishes what they said to me.
Alas, I think audiophiles buy these products and expect some level of purity. The new ultrasonic noise that the 3000 generates likely will not be acceptable to them.
Where we net out is that if you need battery back up, then the 3000 can act as that while producing cleaner power than mains. The high frequency noise that it generates will likely be filtered out by the power supply in your audio gear.
FYI, I plan to test the so called "solar generators" that are so popular these days to see how clean their output is. They may provide an option and alternative to this product.
Personally I have no need for what PurePower 3000 produces so can't recommend it. But very much appreciate company's cooperation.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
