A power utility is reporting suspected pot growers to cops. EFF says that’s illegal.

Thisss!!!

Damn right

So we get this tip, chief, water and power bills, big trash bags, the usual. We go in hot break the door kill the dog all by the book, and you wont believe what we see:

Santorini, Tiny Tim, Tomaccio, Big Beef, well lit in these pristine pots like its fucking Breaking Bad. All the while the owner's blabbering how it's a mistake and this isn't for sale, we've all heard it.

So I put them down and go check the cellar just in case, and this is where the worst of it was. H1776-2023, the pesticide resistant variation, straight from Monsanto labs.

Naturally the sick bastard had an accident on the way, let the coroner do the booking.

Cops:

We suspect you have a grow operation.

Nerds:

I've certainly been growing the size of my LAN.

i remember there were false flags that were raised before when crypto mining operations were flagged as an illegal weed operation

Yeah and he'll lose the house and whoever moves in pays the bill

Someone not having all that much of a garden or suspect that the plant will be gone before harvest if kept outside? Maybe?

I'm sure that you'll be spending no less than $500/month on electricity before you even show up on the list.

"this one house has perfectly consistent power usage. That's suspicious"

Would this monitoring not be on the total power consumption vs hourly/daily?

Electricity grid is like cloud compute.

Better to self-host and run solar or alternative power.

My guess is that the timing and consumption rates are so regularly frequent that it becomes obvious when comparing historical periods.

Lower power use of LEDs just means you can have a larger operation with the same electrical connection.

Also dehumidifiers/air conditioning makes up a big part of the energy use as well. The plants transpire a ton of humidity into the air, which has to go somewhere, and the lights create a ton of heat (even LEDs), which has to be lowered as well.

During flower your lights will also be turned on for exactly 12 hours, and then turned off for exactly 12 hours. That's an extremely easy pattern for a modern smart meter to recognize. Although that could be hidden somewhat by having a lot of small tents and staggering the timing of the lights, so they don't all turn on and off at the exact same time. Makes working on the plants a lot less convenient though, since you must never open the tent while the lights are turned off, as light exposure during the dark period can cause hermies, which will ruin your harvest

As mentioned elsewhere your house and the grid is not rated for this level of energy for long periods of time and ether the company cuts you off or your house burns down.

A typical main breaker in the US is rated for 150 amps, general rule of thumb is breakers are safe for 80% of their rated load continuously. At 110v, that 150 amp panel is good for 13.2kw. Over a 30 day month that's 9,500 kwh.

Anyone using 7000kwh a month is likely on a 200 or 300 amp panel. By the same math above that's 12,700kwh and 19,000kwh.

7,000kwh is well within safe usage of a normal home under a uniform load, definitely so with a 2 or 300amp main breaker.

Ffs an electric car with a home fast charger pulls nearly 12kw on a single outlet. That plus a fridge and AC running in the house would be too much for a standard 150amp service.