How much power consumption before "the man" gets suspicious?

That doesn't mean any thing cuz they don't use thoes here and if they did it would be kinda easy to trick cuz all you'd have to do is to figure out what time of day you'll use the most power in the summer. Have things running to make it look like its normal usage and then set your lights to that so that it looks like your using the items but they are turned off. I'm using this method to help trick the amout used before I even start growing so if they think some thing isn't right well they can come and look and nothing is going on and better yet I can use my lizard lights to trick them to cuz each cage is using 100w each thus making it easer to trick meter by putting the lizard lights on a timer

All this talk is crazy. Comparing 500 or 1000 watts to a complete home's worth of usage is like comparing the smell of a fart to the smell of shitting on the floor. 1000 watts is such an insignificant amount of power. A small electric space heater uses 1500 watts. 99% of meters are mechanical and only can keep track of your usage with the help of a meter reader. I run a 400 watt light. We use an electric heater for supplemental heat in a few rooms that uses 1500 watts so by some of the paranoid theories I have read here shouldn't the cops be getting a search warrant to bust me for the heater? Common sense goes along way folks.

one method of gauging risk is to keep well read on the busts in your area
i've yet to see a grow in my region nailed from electric use, at least from the details in the news stories
the bad thing about power usage is that is supposed to publicly available
take a police force with time on its hands and a judge that hands out warrants a bit too easily
i could see some areas might be higher risk for electric usage than others

yea where I live its not a bunch of houses so my grow has to be like there's 2 people living here to a point. I've just been going for energy saving stuff to help lower the ussage

I was told that they can flag your account from a spike in Off peak usage. A lot of growers time their lights to use as much off peak as possible. Generally at night you would only have your electric water heater and maybe an air conditioner/heater running. Its hard to explain why you are using 5000w off peak and only 3000w peak.
After I got my second 400w HID I changed all the bulbs in the house to CFL, started turning things off when I wasn't using them, switched to gas heating, I also turned the hot water down 5 degrees and onto off peak. My power bill is less now than before I started growing. I am going to be adding at least another 400 w HPS to my next grow, I'll stop using the clothes dryer once its up and running.

yea and the veg area you don't need crazy amounts of CFLs and tubes or a MH but the flowering stage you need the juice to get decent yeilds

it's not so much an increase in total power consumption as it is the routine 18 and 12 hour daily spikes that can give you away. If you are really concerned, then run your veg lights 24 hours and do two flower rooms with the lights on flip flop so that you are running 24 hours a day in flower between two rooms. If you do that, then it will add a constant baseline to your power bill and there won't be a daily spike of 12 hours on and 12 hours off. That's pretty much a sign that you are growing something... not necessarily marijuana, but if they have any reason to believe it's marijuana you are growing, then they can try to start using things like the powerbill as more circumstantial evidence. Powerbill alone isn't enough to go bust down someone's door because they don't know whether you are growing marijuana or other types of plants. I know a guy with a full basement hydro setup and he grows vegetables to sell to local restaurants. He has one little room in the back corner of the basement where he is growing some bud, but the point is that the place is lit up like new york city at night down there and he's never had any trouble with the police or the power company. I'm guessing because he has never done anything to draw attention to himself for the marijuana.

Yea the thing that heats a person out more is if they have trafic comming and going from their place, the smell, mass amounts of grow-op gear comming into your plance and offten unless your smart enough to do things right where you buy enough of 1 thing that you won't have to buy more of that soon and keep stock pileing when you can but like get some thing if your comming home with food or w/e to help cut the eyes down

Heres what you do. If you already began growing than ur shit out of luck. 2-3 months before you start growing. Drastically overuse power to the max. Dont go overboard (i ended up with 1k owed AHHH!). Then when you grow be REALLY conscientious about what u have on. What will happen is the power will spike down when u begin growing. BOOM. DONE.

that's what I'm doing, I prob have around 300 to 500w alone in my room not including my 3 lizard tanks that use 100w each

Toolage57 said:

that's what I'm doing, I prob have around 300 to 500w alone in my room not including my 3 lizard tanks that use 100w each

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lawl im doing it bc my parents own this house and dont want me doing this. They also pay the power bill lawl.

a 1000W increase is not going to tip anyone off. If you want to see how big of a spike you will see on your power bill .......n=(Watts/1000)*(hrs/day of usage)*(days of month). That is how many kWh you are using per month. Now look at your last months power bill and take your billable kWh n/(total billed kWh)*100. Using that formula you can figure out the percentage of your grow room power to your normal power usage. If that number is over 50% someone might raise some eyebrows. Unless its now the season to turn on your *new A/C unit whereas you used to use evaporative cooling, which is far less expensive to power. I am using about 1400 W total so in my situation n=504 kWh which is 53% of my total consumption.... a little high!! But like someone else said when I installed my grow supplies I cut energy usage all over the house with cfl's and NOT using my A/C but my evap cooler. My grow ends up costing me $34/mo.

Motobomb62 said:

a 1000W increase is not going to tip anyone off. If you want to see how big of a spike you will see on your power bill .......n=(Watts/1000)*(hrs/day of usage)*(days of month). That is how many kWh you are using per month. Now look at your last months power bill and take your billable kWh n/(total billed kWh)*100. Using that formula you can figure out the percentage of your grow room power to your normal power usage. If that number is over 50% someone might raise some eyebrows. Unless its now the season to turn on your *new A/C unit whereas you used to use evaporative cooling, which is far less expensive to power. I am using about 1400 W total so in my situation n=504 kWh which is 53% of my total consumption.... a little high!! But like someone else said when I installed my grow supplies I cut energy usage all over the house with cfl's and NOT using my A/C but my evap cooler. My grow ends up costing me $34/mo.

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https://www.rollitup.org/newbie-central/318968-power-consumption-tips-new-growers.html <There are more deeper explanations of this here

Wohjew said:

well now with these smart meters the can see your 12/12 cycyles. they can see how much your using per hour, per day ect ect . what does that mean to everyone ? im considering a flip flop and 2 rooms to keep a constant draw of electricity. but for now i will still continue to pay my bills on time . i run 3000kw hours every 60 days . in a 1300 square house . ppl live in

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Smart meters are more of a new tech for the home user now, which is indeed new technology. To view your power usage by circuit in a new home is something that is being sold as an upgrade!! SMART monitoring folks, it's all about conservation now! Previously before the smart meters were king, power companies still can tell how much power you use AND when you use it. They know when your usage goes up and goes down. For all those folks out there who say "Nay! Impossible'!", well, consider this. They know your DAILY usage already and some people (like me) get that on their bill every month! If they can take a sample daily, they can take a sample hourly, on the minute, etc.....

Blazed Hippie said:

Heres what you do. If you already began growing than ur shit out of luck. 2-3 months before you start growing. Drastically overuse power to the max. Dont go overboard (i ended up with 1k owed AHHH!). Then when you grow be REALLY conscientious about what u have on. What will happen is the power will spike down when u begin growing. BOOM. DONE.

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This is stupid. Your solution to being suspicious of power is to overuse power before you start to grow and then taper it off so it stays the same? *cough*. So in otherwords, your using the same power all the time and there's equal "suspicion" to everything. Fail.

Pay your bill, the power co wont be mad at ya.

you what if you just have 5-100w light-bulbs i dont think they would get suspicious

if your worried you should put cfls in the rest of your house to conserve energy.. and get on a regular habit of conserving more energy shutting off lights when they dont need to be on and turn your hot water heater down... idk just some ideas..

researchkitty said:

Smart meters are more of a new tech for the home user now, which is indeed new technology. To view your power usage by circuit in a new home is something that is being sold as an upgrade!! SMART monitoring folks, it's all about conservation now! Previously before the smart meters were king, power companies still can tell how much power you use AND when you use it. They know when your usage goes up and goes down. For all those folks out there who say "Nay! Impossible'!", well, consider this. They know your DAILY usage already and some people (like me) get that on their bill every month! If they can take a sample daily, they can take a sample hourly, on the minute, etc.....



This is stupid. Your solution to being suspicious of power is to overuse power before you start to grow and then taper it off so it stays the same? *cough*. So in otherwords, your using the same power all the time and there's equal "suspicion" to everything. Fail.

Pay your bill, the power co wont be mad at ya.

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if you have a traditional meter they cannot see any spikes in usage. that daily usage number is an average they calculated.

Hey if you were to use a fixture with a 240V primary winding on your ballast your power consumption would be less... Balance your load in your panel can help as an unbalanced load can cause power factor issues... I was in the Air Force working as a Lineman for 21 years... And your power company isnt going to notice 500w if you were to get a deep freeze it would pull that much power... Bbut if you have all your lighting/fans on one or two breakers on the same phase of power then you will cause an issue at the transformer that feeds your facility and your neighbors too... Then here they come to see what the deal is with meters to check loads on each house...

Dragger

Feel free to PM me if you have electrical questions I will try my best to answer them...

researchkitty said:

This is stupid. Your solution to being suspicious of power is to overuse power before you start to grow and then taper it off so it stays the same? *cough*. So in otherwords, your using the same power all the time and there's equal "suspicion" to everything. Fail.

Pay your bill, the power co wont be mad at ya.

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wow u actually didnt get what I said. Don't spew ignorant comments out. I meant over use power so that ur using MORE than you will during the grow. THen during the grow consistently have it way lower than it was for those 3 months. There is no evidence at this point that leads to growing because the spike was so short. And this technique worked perfectly with the people I didnt want to know about the grow, its not always the cops. Before the spike bill was at 200 during the spike 700-1000 after the spike 3-4 hundred. see wat i mean. I may be paranoid but i found it needed to shield the spike of 100-200 dollars in power. Especially bc the people i dont want to know about this pay the bill. Its gonna look REALLY cheap after those 3 months of paying. Even tho it went up a bit. BOOM HEADSHOT.

dragger, that was interesting on the phase
will different breakers be on different phases, if i understand your post?
or is it certain breakers depending on the specific wiring?

if you look at your panel say down the left side the first breaker is on A phase and the next is on B phase and the next is on A phase and so on... its the same for the other side of the panel too... you want to make sure you have the same amount of amps on both phases that will balance it out and you will have a better power factor...

Dragger...