I have to agree with spiking your power bill 3 to 4 months before you grow. There's a power guy that comes to this area about every 1 to 3 months to check on the power usage so doing the power spike thing is realy smart. I'm thinking about switching my CFL lights in the house to LED since they only use 3.5 watts for one. I would use it for growing but it only puts out just a little over 1,000 lumes but then again that's 333 lumes per watt witch is pretty good compared to a 45w, 6500k, 3000 lume CFL for lumes per watt out put
How much power consumption before "the man" gets suspicious?
- Thread starter HottFuzz
- Start date
if your growing in your parents house and you dont want them to know cause they pay the bill then your a bad kid , its there house and there asses on the line . SMART meters will be everywhere soon . all in all pay the bills on time ....lol my parents house , im sure your not setting up a 3kw op but still ....
princeofrtown
Member
you know, after reading all these forums i cant believe not a single person that works for a power company RIGHT NOW has not had a grow and has not visited this site and can GIVE US THE ANSWEEERRRRR hahaha
LEDGrowKing
Active Member
You have nothing to worry about. Computers can have power supplies ranging up to 1000w+. It all depends on where you live and who you're paying electric to. PG&E rarely ask questions as long as the bill is paid. I know a couple people running 20,000 to 30,000 watts, paying their monthly bills of ~$5000 in cash at their local PG&E. No one has asked any questions. This is California, though, not sure where you're growing.
princeofrtown
Member
virginia... i dunno dominion is shady..
ogreballerina
Well-Known Member
Lol..
An air conditioner uses 2x that much...my computer uses 1k under full load.
With all the electronics people have today 500w is a blip...
But if your legal.... you don't have to worry about it.
If you have your own house and are worried about it ( and not being legal)..buy a generator and have it take up the slack.
An air conditioner uses 2x that much...my computer uses 1k under full load.
With all the electronics people have today 500w is a blip...
But if your legal.... you don't have to worry about it.
If you have your own house and are worried about it ( and not being legal)..buy a generator and have it take up the slack.
tip top toker
Well-Known Member
The police cannot obtain a warrant from a FLIR image alone. Like excessive power usage, these are nothing mroe than things to raise suspicion, but do not actually grant any legal ability to get a warrant. In the EU, the warrant could easily be overturned for something like that as it would be in breach of section 8 of the human rights act.
ogreballerina
Well-Known Member
Especially now a days...
They can't tell if or what you are doing with all that extra heat...maybe you have a hot tub..or indoor vegetable garden..or sun room.
An overflight is not enough for a warrant...
I'm surprised they still use choppers for overflights...( Due to budget cuts our towns chopper was grounded..population 400k )
The easiest thing to do if your so worried is to move to a state where it's legal...even if your not..nobody cares anymore.
22 percent of our state has applied for a MMJ card...with thousands more every day.
tip top toker
Well-Known Member
Exactly, or maybe that hotspot on the roof is because you have a 4000w HPS setup. even if they can rpove you own and that the hotpot is from such a setup, still nothing they can do wihtout proof that there is cannabis involved in all of this
My town has budget issues, cuts etc, yet they still rent a helicopter just for searching. (to their credit they do bust a good number of factories, although my fav local bust was simply because neighbours phoned the police to state that one house in the area had no snow on it's roofs whatsoever
)
johlikesred
Member
get some solar panels and you can have as much as you want!
princeofrtown
Member
what would everyone consider an appropriate value for increase to set off a flag?
$20?
$50?
$100?
$500???
$20?
$50?
$100?
$500???
princeofrtown
Member
bump bump bump
Adi1989
Active Member
I used to work for British gas and they were constantly reporting people but only fair size operations.
We could see when there was a great voltage draw this is caused by the igniters that spark the discharge lamps, there is a great very unique draw to ignite the discharge lamp which we can see, when the bulb is first ignited, its only when they reach full brightness this then drops. Its a very, very unique power draw nothing else like it. LEDS are completely different but still unique, the transformers instead step down the voltage which we can also tell, but a great deal of people use LED for down lighting in their ceilings but these only draw 100 / 300w in houses. We can even tell when people open their fridge due to the power it takes to re-refrigerate, invasion of privacy I know!
The best way to hide it is use Tesla modules to charge and discharge the electricity, you can even charge Tesla modules at charging stations if you want to be super under the radar but a advanced charging system would need to be setup to charge at the 50kw charging speeds, no electrical company will report high usage its only if they see a correlation at certain times of the day lights on / off as people could have 1 electrical heater per room! Thats 3kw, if you have 10 rooms thats 30kw per hour 720kw per day! Some people just dont realise how much a electrical heater costs in power.
Ps What ever you do DO NOT Steal the power!!!!
Thats the biggest reason people got caught, its easy to pin point the house that is stealing power even if you are temporally connecting and disconnecting the meter.
Ps dont tell them I told you guys.
DoubleAtotheRON
Well-Known Member
Legal grow here, but .. Before legalization, we would use on average 2500KWH per month, after the grow setup, we now burn about 7000 KWH per month, and have been for a year or better. I called my electric company because I thought it was a little higher than expected. Turns out it was my old home AC unit getting old.. But i called up there and told the lady about my concern, and she was like "Oh yeah!, you are going through alot!", They dont care as long as you're paying the bill. We're now down to about 6000KWH after a new AC unit in the house.
JoeBlow5823
Well-Known Member
Until you are running at least 4000w of lights and ac to cool it you really have nothing to worry about. And really the power company doesnt care what their power goes into as long as u pay for it. Most plug in electric heaters use 1500w. Rats will get you a hundred times over before the power company does.
end_of_the_tunnel
Well-Known Member
I heard whispers that since the Manchester 2017 event, the utility companies are asked to report increases in usage. Are you still in the trade, or heard anything from collegues?I used to work for British gas and they were constantly reporting people but only fair size operations.
We could see when there was a great voltage draw this is caused by the igniters that spark the discharge lamps, there is a great very unique draw to ignite the discharge lamp which we can see, when the bulb is first ignited, its only when they reach full brightness this then drops. Its a very, very unique power draw nothing else like it. LEDS are completely different but still unique, the transformers instead step down the voltage which we can also tell, but a great deal of people use LED for down lighting in their ceilings but these only draw 100 / 300w in houses. We can even tell when people open their fridge due to the power it takes to re-refrigerate, invasion of privacy I know!
The best way to hide it is use Tesla modules to charge and discharge the electricity, you can even charge Tesla modules at charging stations if you want to be super under the radar but a advanced charging system would need to be setup to charge at the 50kw charging speeds, no electrical company will report high usage its only if they see a correlation at certain times of the day lights on / off as people could have 1 electrical heater per room! Thats 3kw, if you have 10 rooms thats 30kw per hour 720kw per day! Some people just dont realise how much a electrical heater costs in power.
Ps What ever you do DO NOT Steal the power!!!!
Thats the biggest reason people got caught, its easy to pin point the house that is stealing power even if you are temporally connecting and disconnecting the meter.
Ps dont tell them I told you guys.
Adi1989
Active Member
Sorry I havent heard of that before. Its quite normal to have a increase in usage especially in winter.
Politieisnietmijnvriend
Well-Known Member
Don't stress it iw ould say..
I mean these days youcan use power consumption for many things.
Airco / Cryptomining etc
I mean these days youcan use power consumption for many things.
Airco / Cryptomining etc