bobbooty

Will my electric use get me busted?

I’m tired of seeing the same type of post every few weeks “will my power use get me busted?” I’ve been growing for at least 18 years, and personally, I’ve never heard of any bust that was because of the power bill. We all wonder if the use of electricity from our indoor hobby will cause suspicion of growing. High electric bills will arouse suspicion and separate your use from your neighbors, right? Well, the answer depends on a few things:

1. Where you live.
2. Who your power provider is (private vs. municipality owned)
3. Pay your bill on time, and you’ll be fine.
4. There are many things that use a lot of electricity, i.e. hot tubs, kilns, welding tools.
5. There is no average uses in your neighborhood, because it depends on where you live (see #1, lol)

The power company only wants one thing, your money. They want you to use lots of electricity (because they are competitive with other companies), so they can make money. They aren’t required to report usage to anyone (at least not the private companies), only grid usage per quarter, for the shareholders. What about all those articles of busts that included somewhere in the article something about the “high electric bills” being the reason for the bust? I’m willing to bet most of the time that’s just propaganda, because leo really just wants to protect CI (Confidential Informant) confidentiality and other evidence. It’s not illegal to own indoor growing equipment, marijuana is. A bust begins with an investigation, an investigation is started when an informant or CI tells leo “hey, this guys growing here” then leo does the rest.

Once an investigation is initiated, the leo may do one or more of the following:

1. They may do a “knock and talk”
2. Bring a drug dog to location.
3. Observe for obvious signs of indoor growing i.e. tin foil on windows, smell, visible grow debris.
4. They may come out to the location see nothing, and do nothing about it.

This leads me to simple rules any grower should follow:

1. Never tell or show anyone your grow.
2. Never give the leo a reason to enter your house. This means stay out of trouble.
3. Never let light or smell leaks escape. This is probably the easiest way for the cops to bust you.
4. Never throw anything from the grow out in your normal garbage, no stems, leaves, seeds, roaches, nothing.

What I recommend people do, is educate themselves, read up on local laws, and take the time to understand your own local law enforcement agency, and their practices regarding raids, and grow ops.


Another thing to note is that if you have multiple electric accounts in your name, the leo can and will pull the other accounts during an investigation and get search warrants on the addresses listed on the accounts.

I’m going to look for as many threads on this subject as I can find in the recent past and post them here, for easy re-viewing.

how many lights r okay?
how many lights r okay? - The Garden's Cure

Anyone with lighting electricity consuption experience, your input would be appreciate
Anyone with lighting electricity consuption experience, your input would be apreciate - The Garden's Cure

who's watching my power bill?
who's watching my power bill? - The Garden's Cure


what electric companies think of our hobby
what electric companies think of our hobby - The Garden's Cure

Reason #1208 not to steal electricity
Reason #1208 not to steal electricity - The Garden's Cure

__________________

Welcome to gardenscure.com. Growing marijuana in the United States is a federal offence. Aquisition of live cannabis seeds is illegal in the United States. The Garden's Cure Posting Guidelines can be found here.The Acceptable Use Policy can be found here. The grow guide can be found here. My SoG growroom can be seen in my journal. want to learn more about medical marijuana in the US? check out the Americans For Safe Access site here. and MediCann here.

Ron Bennett

For the most part I agree, but the threat is real nevertheless...

Many utilities are now installing meters that send / store power usage data ... the days of them just reading the meter every month or so are numbered.

With more detailed usage data, a grow operation is likely to stand out even more.

Even with once a month readings, the power usage of a large grow will stand out.

Simpliest things is for one to downsize their grow ... running a couple of extra smaller energy-efficient lights will bump up usage, but likely not by enough to raise any suspicions.

Balancing load helps too by running less other lights in the house and putting in energy saving bulbs in the others; running the HVAC, etc less.

I'm not a grower, so I'm not overly familiar with the power usage of various "grow" lights, etc ... with that said, one can likely increase their power load by around several extra KWH per day average without arousing any suspicions...

Thing of it is though, a few big lights can easily push up energy usage way beyond a several extra KWH per day...

ie. just 1000 watts (actual draw) of lighting cycled 12/12 alone will bump up one's daily usage by 12 KWH. Add in fans / ventilation, and power usage can easily add a few more KWH per day on top of that ... one could easily end up drawing 15 to 20 extra KWH with 1000 watts of lighting and a few fans.

For folks who read down this far...

I'm curious if there has been any serious effort to breed strains of cannabis that will grow with less lighting? ... that would certainly help many folks, and help the environment too

Ron

rockclimber

Good post bobbooty If anyone has any questions about power use:

1. Read this thread again.
2. Look at my grow and then look at your grow.

Nottheman

. . .and in turn will help us. . .

kinda nice how that works.

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Last Successful Grow: Durban and Medicine Man '05

'07 Grow: Early Pearl

bobbooty

are you talking about those "smart meters" or digital meters? i did some research on this already. You have to ask and pay for one of those to be installed. It also depends where you live, and what subdivision even. Those "smart meters" as far as we know at this point, only show when power goes on and off, and have a wireless transmitter for easy data retrieval. heres what the smart meter looks like, google image.

how?

then do this, buy a kiln and plug it in. let us know when the cops come.

its too early in the technology of these "smart meters" to tell just exactly what they track. The easiest ways to defeat it, are creating constant use, so there is no cycling. Break your grow op down to 2 rooms, run the lighting on opposite time schedules.

__________________

Welcome to gardenscure.com. Growing marijuana in the United States is a federal offence. Aquisition of live cannabis seeds is illegal in the United States. The Garden's Cure Posting Guidelines can be found here.The Acceptable Use Policy can be found here. The grow guide can be found here. My SoG growroom can be seen in my journal. want to learn more about medical marijuana in the US? check out the Americans For Safe Access site here. and MediCann here.

penguin

I agree that investigations neither start nor end with power bills, and that electricity use is likely to be pretty far down on the list of things that checks after an investigation gets underway. But when starts to serve subpoenas, the process server may very well be paying a visit to the electric company (along with the bank and the credit card company). In the Dagy case, electrical consumption was one of several factors (which included a positive alert by a drug dog) that prompted to obtain the search warrant.

Preventing the investigation in the first place is absolutely the way to go. Don't sell, don't tell, and don't smell. No odor or light leaks, keep the plants and parephenalia out of plain view. Don't put anything related to the grow in your own trash, and don't get caught putting it in anyone else's trash, either. Etc., etc.

For me, avoiding excessively high power bills and credit card paper trails comes more under the heading of "pre-emptive damage control that might be useful if something goes horribly wrong."


penguin

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bobbooty

I'm glad you brought up the Dagy case, im gonna pick apart that article a little bit.

this is probably because the CI couldnt tell leo precisely which house it was in the nieghborhood, so leo just grabs the whole nieghborhood power records, and compares notes.

see? of course he isnt going to say what triggered the investigation. The CI or informant did. They didnt just bring the dog to a bunch of random houses to see if they were growing, there had to be other evidence that started the investigation that wasnt disclosed in that article.

the irony of this, is the fact that the Dagy's didnt have any marijuana growing at their residence.

This is a city owned power provider (municipal). Since it is city, or state owned, leo had great ease in getting the power bill information they needed.

__________________

Welcome to gardenscure.com. Growing marijuana in the United States is a federal offence. Aquisition of live cannabis seeds is illegal in the United States. The Garden's Cure Posting Guidelines can be found here.The Acceptable Use Policy can be found here. The grow guide can be found here. My SoG growroom can be seen in my journal. want to learn more about medical marijuana in the US? check out the Americans For Safe Access site here. and MediCann here.

killer12382

"This leads me to simple rules any grower should follow:

1. Never tell or show anyone your grow.
2. Never give the leo a reason to enter your house. This means stay out of trouble.
3. Never let light or smell leaks escape. This is probably the easiest way for the cops to bust you.
4. Never throw anything from the grow out in your normal garbage, no stems, leaves, seeds, roaches, nothing. "

Those are the most important rules and are the ones that get broken the most.

bobbooty

/bump

__________________

Welcome to gardenscure.com. Growing marijuana in the United States is a federal offence. Aquisition of live cannabis seeds is illegal in the United States. The Garden's Cure Posting Guidelines can be found here.The Acceptable Use Policy can be found here. The grow guide can be found here. My SoG growroom can be seen in my journal. want to learn more about medical marijuana in the US? check out the Americans For Safe Access site here. and MediCann here.

Amun

does anyone know if they bring a dog out to your house if you would be able to use 'i have a pet/dog/cat' inside and thats the reason your cop dog is going off as an excuse?

would that work?