There is no foolproof way to blow up a house in a residential neighborhood and completely avoid risk.
Paying your bill on time might help keep you off the radar, so to speak, but I don't think it should be considered a mitigating factor in terms of overall risk...
If you're that concerned, maybe set up a flip/flop with a reasonable amount of lights (just off the top of my head I would say 4kw or less in an average home, say ~2000 sq ft) to limit the amount of electricity being consumed at one particular time. With that said, if you're somewhere that has Smart Meters, it doesn't matter what you're doing, they know what is plugged in and when. Either way, anybody who tries to give you an exact, definitive amount of electricity that you can safely consume for a grow is full of shit as there is no possible way to account for all the variables.
The most important thing you can do is ensure that you have maintained security on your end. I'm lucky to have a girlfriend who doesn't smoke, so I can have her walk around the house and do "smell checks" occasionally. All it takes is a few hours with your power out and no fan/scrubber running to make your whole house stink, and that stink can easily go through a door or two.
If you maintain security overall, don't have people coming and going, don't have others who know about your operation, and take care of the odor, you are well on your way to taking the best preventative measures you can. Again, however, you can never account for all variables and you never know what might happen, so the best you can do is take care of everything you can control and hope for the best from there.
A good example of this: a buddy of mine had a fairly small op going in a residential neighborhood, I think 4 or 5 lights maybe (4-5000w). The electricity wasn't an issue so far as we know -- but when heavy winds hit us and knocked a big tree over and through his roof, he had all of 15 minutes before the paramedics and fire department arrived to move everything to a friend's house a few hundred yards away. He didn't get in any legal trouble, but that was entirely luck -- he had time to finish cleaning up before the police themselves showed up. He got lucky as shit. Had he not been home, he would be in prison right now.
Treat every move you make with a commercial grow as though it is the difference between incarceration and freedom. Makes for a somewhat paranoid existence at times, but it's the safest way you can go about this hobby of ours in an illegal state.
"..that keeps you under the radar..
. I know, it's hard, my tongue is full of bite marks.
