I was wanting to try out growing but people told me my folks had too much to loose if i got busted since i havent moved out yet. I was thinking about looking at nearby rural land in the area of 5 to 10 acres. I was thinking of a place with trees on the road and just buying a steel cargo container that you see on ships and such. You can get them in 40' x 7' x 7' which i thought would be a pretty nice ammount of room. I planned on framing it, insulating and putting a breaker box in. But if i am using as much electricity as a small house but theres nothing on my lot but a steel box would this be strange to the utility company? What if i could find an old motor home and tow it upfront and have wires appearing to go to it so it looks like i have a reasonable use for electricity. I dont want any suspicion. Also would one of those cargo containers be a good area to grow alot if i threw in some air conditioning, dehumidifiers, and maybe even heat if nessecarry?

Someone I know has that same setup but burried in the ground. Throw a garden shed over top with a generator inside for power. Something that size you will need 10 - 20 lights depends how big you want. It sounds like you want to go big so thats what I would do you should be able to get 200 plants or so in one of those bins and get a propane powered standby generator 1 KW per light and than add a couple. So 15 - 1000 watt lites would be a 18 - 19 kw generator.

That would be a damn big generator. So you think it would be risky to use utility power? I know it would be cheaper than buying propane all the time :/ Burrying the thing would be a pain because i would need an easy way in to the container. Im afraid that it would be so expensive that i might as well but a pre manufactured steel building. It would be pretty cool to have a little shipping container cave though lol. The problem is i dont have tons of money right now which is part of why i want this. I might be able to afford a monthly payment for the land but i would be saving for a while to get a huge generator and a shed and renting a backhoe and everything. Im thinking the generator would be pretty expensive as i would need a nice sine wave output so i dont ruin my ballasts and 20kw is huge. Thanks for the fast reply though. Im still not sure if i can afford this lol.

check out solar panels for power. the next house that i build i am going to put them in specifically for my grow room.

To run a grow op with solar it would cost you 30 - 35000 plus you still need a back up generator anyway. You would need a huge battery bank also. For each 1000 watt light you would need 1600 watts of solar to run your lighjt plus charge the battery for night time so for ten lights you would need 16000 watts of solar panels at 8.00 a watt the cost is huge. You would never be able to run a large scale operation from solar the cost would be astronomical. Its cheaper to by a $5000 dollar propane generator and spend 1000 a month on propane then go solar. And either way you still need a generator in case your system goes down or it rains for days.

Solar would be awsome dude. But the cheapest pricing i can find on panels is 3 dollars per watt which would be a pretty big investment and extremely difficult for me to save up. The other problem is if you want more hours of lighting than you get out doors you will need to oversize with panels and have a large battery bank and inverter setup which is too expensive. Maybe direct solar with no batteries during the daytime and utility or generator during the dark hours

Do you guys think the Motorhome cover up would work if i was using a constant 10kw from the utilities until i could make some profit and buy some panels or generators? I dont want any attention from anyone. Maybe i should just buy a multi car steel garage and frame off a section inside. That might be more realistic in having a big load right?

Also when the utilities make a new connection do they always put in those digital meters that can see when your usage goes up and down instead of an overall usage? At my current location i have the mechanical one that spins the little disks which i dont think they can see when all my appliances are turning off and on.

like I said a 5000 home stanbe generator is the best way to go. www.electricgeneratorsdirect.com and 1000 a month for propane. You would pay the generator off the first harvest. The home standby ones won't last that long as they are not built for constant running but you will get a year on it and swap it out. On a scale that large you will made lots of profit. You have no worries with a generator your going to be consuming huge amounts of power and will get caught for sure with the power company unless your going to run less than 5 1000's watters.

1000 bucks a month is more than i am making right now lol

Also you would spend alot on those bulk thousand gallon tanks and wouldnt it be suspicios calling the propane truck out every so often on a random country lot with a little shed on it
I thought they might get curious as to whats going on when your buying hundreds or thousands of gallons a month for a little shed

Thats a good point about the life of the generators, if im raking some cash it wont matter. I was going to say i should spend more on a continuos duty diesel or somthing but that would come later. Also i think it would be less sketch if i was going diesel and i had a trailer with a few hundred gallon diesel tank on it and i went to different gas stations every time instead of having someone come to me with propane.

no need for diesel. My buddy runs 26 - 1000 watters of a 30 kw propane model like i told you. he spends about 1500 a month on propane. He has a farm there also so it doesn't look like to suspitious. You couls also have your propane tanks on a trailer so you could go in and move them. Or alternate propane suppliers every other month have a diffrent one fill you up.

And the propane tanks you should get close to free for buying there propane. Thats the way its here as long as your buying propane they might charge a bit for rental though.