Hello everyone!
My lab has recently gotten a hold of about 7 reactors, with plans to expand to more in the near future. While reading through the startup documents, it was recommended that users get the power supply bank below.
Pioreactor Recommendation:
Unfortunately, it seems that SIIG doesn’t offer this model anymore. While researching for other power supplies, I could not find any decent units from other brands that support a large amount of ports, with wattage above 15W, and with support for both 5V and 12V output. SIIG does have what seems to be an updated model ID-US0C11-S1, which is available as of Jun 24, 2025.
Updated (in stock) Recommendation:
While this thing is wildly overkill in terms of the wattage, it is the only power supply that I could find on the market that has support for both 5V and 12V. To my knowledge, this is because the modern USB PD 2.0 standards have 5,9,15, and 20V support. So, most modern manufacturers do not bother to add in the 12V support anymore.
The 12V support is really only necessary if you plan on using a lot of power to the periphery.
(See the Pioreactor user guide>external-power for more info)
To use the ports on my updated recommendation, I have also sourced 3 types of cables from DigiKey
12V C to barrel
adafruit
model 5450
Unfortunately the C to barrel is not shielded.
C to C
digikey
sparkfun-electronics
16905
C to Micro
digikey
globtek-inc
USB5MIC27251M0USBCB-R
I also found a slightly cheaper power supply on DigiKey that has 5v/2.4A (15W per port) support.
digikey
coolgear
U2CHGRHUB10
If you want to use this one, I think most USBA to MicroB cables should work as long as they are USB PD 2.0 Compliant.
Adafruit product 592
Word of Caution
Yes, $700 is a lot of money, but if your lab is going to be running a large amount of Pioreactors, I think it would be better to buy something from a reputable brand. You get what you pay for. Definitely stay away from the cheap ~$50 amazon power supply units. it is very common that they do not support the wattage when all of the ports are used.
I am by no means an electrical engineer, but I hope this helps y’all get started!