Quote Originally Posted by socialistpete
Your electric company does not care if your bill jumps a little high as long as you pay your bill there happy.
Bang on.

Most people on this site are running under a 1000w at a time for there grow setup,
Been running 2x 1000HPS 12/12, 1x 400W HPS 24/0, and about 100W of flo's 24/0 for the last 8 years. Bill paid in full on the due date, every time. Never a complaint.

I think we have a responsibilty to stop spreading the "my friends, friends, uncles, cousin got turned in by his electric company for growing" rumors. No judge in his right mind is going to give the cops a search warrant with the only evidence being an increased electric bill. And if he did A lawyer fresh out of law school should be able to get that warrant dismissed.
Quite right. No judge would issue a warrant on power consumption alone. It'd be a consideration, but there'd have to be other, more specific cause. Scent in combination with power consumption might get LEO over the wire with some bastard judges, but the more sensible ones (i.e most of them) will want some evidence of drug trading activity as well.

A pedestrian op with CFLs for clones, a 150-250W MH or HPS for mums and a 600 for flowering would be only a modest increase in power consumption in the ordinary modern home.

The place where a lot of stoooooopid criminal type growers fall down is when they bridge out the power meter. If the meter doesn't spin, the pwr co sends out a techie to replace it. If the new meter doesn't spin, he puts an amprobe around the hot lead and notes if there's current. If he has current flow but no meter spin, he calls his supervisor, who in turn calls the cops.
Al B. Fuct Reviewed by Al B. Fuct on . FAQ! How To Save Electricity whilst growing! Or just lower your power bill! How To Save Electricity whilst growing! Or just lower your power bill Dramatically! FAQ Hey all! Iv recently been looking into how to save electricity around the home. As all of us know using HID’S increases our electricity bills substantially and it can be quite a shock when the inevitable bill arrives. More pressingly a certain percentage of growers do not set up the grow light/lights efficiently and as a end result when harvest day arrives little bud is produced but the electricity Rating: 5