What better way to showcase a product than to put in in your showroom? But for Boca Theater and Automation in Boca Raton, Fla., the deployment of the RoseWater Energy HUB in its newly remodeled showroom is more than just a product to show clients … it is also helping to power and protect the design center.
The company, which is No. 97 on the 2016 CE Pro 100 with nearly $3 million in revenues, recently opened a new luxury, state-of-the-art showroom and included the RoseWater Energy HUB in the update. The HUB was installed in the newly remodeled showroom to improve power quality, provide battery backup and eventually complement future solar panel installations.
“This is the third facility I have built over the years; the other two utilized small commercially available UPS’s powering our servers, workstations, and core AV gear,” says Jeff Galea, chief operating officer and founder of Boca Theater and Automation. “Each UPS utilized either two or four 12V batteries. To support a staff of 28 employees, a server room, and an A/V rack, I maintained approximately 120 batteries powering in excess of 30 individual UPSs. During a power outage, it was a near certainty that one or more UPS would die unpredictably after a few minutes.”
With experience as an electrical engineer, Galea investigated and brainstormed the concept of building a large scale power condition and UPS system for his customers that experience frequent, although brief, power outages in South Florida. Galea believes the RoseWater Energy Group has created a product that’s absolutely necessary for households.
“Many people are told that a generator is a good solution for backup power,” Galea notes. “This is a mistake – a generator takes time to kick on; even a second would be too long as sensitive systems would not tolerate the blip. Very brief outages do not trigger a generator as it simply can’t start up and trigger the transfer switch that fast. And even worse, we see many cases where the power flickers off and on several times before settling off or on. During this time, sensitive equipment is thrashing off and on and the generator isn’t doing anything because the outages are too brief.
“When the power is off long enough to cycle the generator on, it generates the dirtiest power imaginable which causes problems with everything from business equipment to lighting control, and all the AV in-between. With the Hub, I am getting a clean 60 cycle sinewave during an outage, while powered, and all the in-between times. When the power fluctuates several times before settling off or on, connected equipment is completely isolated,” he says.
“I have had zero power-related failures since installing the HUB and absolutely zero hum and noise in my high-end AV systems,” Galea adds. “I have an extremely expensive projector in our theater demo room, and it has never suffered a power outage – something that would have caused one or both of its bulbs to blow in the past. The power-related problems I lived with and fought relentlessly without the HUB are completely gone. What I expected from the HUB was simple, carefree, reliability. That’s what I have and now that I have lived with it for months, I can’t imagine life without it.”
