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PurePower 3000 AC Regenerator Review

Rate this AC Regenerator/Battery Back up:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 83 68.0%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 34 27.9%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 5 4.1%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    122

amirm

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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.
PurePower 3000 AC Regnerator Battery Backup audiophile power filter regen review.jpg

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:
PurePower 3000 AC Regnerator Battery Backup audiophile power filter regen back AC receptacles ...jpg

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:
Raw AC Input Dashboard Doubled to 240 volt Distortion and Noise Measurements.png

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:
PurePower 3000 AC Regnerator Battery Backup Measurements.png


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:
Raw AC Input Dashboard Doubled to 240 volt Distortion and Noise Spurious Tones Measurements.png


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):
Raw AC Input Dashboard Doubled to 240 volt Wideband Spectrum Measurements.png


For sanity check, I captured the output of the 240 transformer by itself:
PurePower 3000 AC Regnerator Battery Backup Wideband Spectrum Measurements.png

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/
 
Thanks for the test Amir. :)

If we disregard Hifi and assume the 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.
When in that case would this product help? What would be examples of things it would power that would give positive and noticeable results?

Regarding the Battery Back up. How much battery capacity does it have?
 
If we disregard Hifi and assume the 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.
When in that case would this product help? What would be examples of things it would power that would give positive and noticeable results?
Well, certainly not any well measuring device as they are very much isolating themselves from mains distortion & noise. That said, I suspect there are a device or two that lack such comprehensive filter and could somehow be improved objectively.
 
How does this differ from a regular UPS for the PC market?
 
Well, certainly not any well measuring device as they are very much isolating themselves from mains distortion & noise. That said, I suspect there are a device or two that lack such comprehensive filter and could somehow be improved objectively.
I checked their website and they only talk about audio, so maybe I shouldn't speculate about anything other than HiFi?

Regarding battery support, nothing is said objectively about capacity, just this:

Pure Power Continuity

In addition to pure power, the PurePower™ APS provides you with something unique in audio power regenerators - protection against power outage. The PurePower™ APS maintains full wattage output even when the power fails completely. All PurePower™ models give you continued pure power at full output and quality from minutes to hours, depending on your consumption. With the option of adding up to four PurePower™ Power Packs, you can have several hours of full power while your neighbors are in the dark.


Minutes or hours depending on what you plugged in. Of course.

Sometimes I plug in a power bank with my Topping E30 DAC. Its capacity is clearly visible on the pack itself. That's many hours of use. But, that with a DAC that doesn't require much power.
171910_50487.png
 
Last edited:
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How does this differ from a regular UPS for the PC market?
Regular UPS sends the incoming power to output so other than some rudimentary filtering, it doesn't do anything. There are some online, dual conversion which do something similar but I have not measured any. They tend to be more expensive although likely not this expensive.

As I noted in the review, I plan to test the new power plants that have become so popular now. Will see what their power quality is.
 
How does it do under certain loads ?

Any wide range power supply device can run on 240V.
Or 2 similar 110V power incandescent bulbs in series ?

Looks like a 20kHz PWM (re)generated mains frequency and the reason why it is lightweight (smaller transformers).
Most likely synchronized with the incoming mains frequency.
 
Last edited:
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.
View attachment 453773
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:
View attachment 453774
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:
View attachment 453776
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:
View attachment 453777

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:
View attachment 453779

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):
View attachment 453780

For sanity check, I captured the output of the 240 transformer by itself:
View attachment 453781
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/

It is not about noise, it's about output impedance. Some electrical outlet may has 5 ohm's. UPS's like that, online double conversion pure sinus, may has under 1ohm output impedance, maybe under 0.1 ohm and that is audible. So, is not just about the noise.
 
What these generators are mostly about is mains voltages dropping waaayyy below the nominal value or increasing above certain levels (so poorly regulated mains for whatever reason). In that case the output voltage remains stable and does not sag.
This may well be beneficial with equipment using linear power supplies.

Forking out $ 5k is a lot to fix that. There are probably cheaper regenerators around,
 
I think it is important to mention that after the IEC 61000-2-2 devices should be fine with THD values up to 8% long term and up to 11% short term. Very sensitive devices like network communication systems should be fine with values of at least up to 5%.
 
I think it is important to mention that after the IEC 61000-2-2 devices should be fine with THD values up to 8% long term and up to 11% short term. Very sensitive devices like network communication systems should be fine with values of at least up to 5%.
Aha, that was exactly the aspect I was curious about.:)
 
Some electrical outlet may has 5 ohm's

So when you plug-in a 360W load in such an outlet voltage will drop back to about 105V (assuming an 120V standard supply voltage). Altough that's not a crazy load, that voltage drop is already more than double of what's recommended by the National Electrical Code (NEC). If that's a problem you experience at home you better spend your 5k$ on improving the wiring I guess. The PurePower website has a page of 10 potential issues their products intend to solve, and impedance problems are not even being mentioned so it must be an edge case at best.
 
Amirm, any chance of you doing the same testing on your whole house generator?
 
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