Advice needed on electrical consumption

[bass ackwards]

I am going to start up a grow op soon but I'm having doubts as to the heavy usage of electricity. What I will be doing is operating two grow rooms each with six 600w HPS lights. One clone/veg room with eight 125w CFL's.
add in three portable A/C units and two quarter horse chillers and my usage will reach nearly 100kw/day. Now if this were in an industrial site, I wouldn't worry too much about that usage.
And I might even go that route if I could figure out how to avoid periodic inspections by the fire department. Possibly by not licensing as a business, possibly renting as a storage/warehouse facility.
The other option is to put the op in a house thereby eliminating the problem of inspections. But this then raises the question of heavy consumption of electricity.
Can any of you guys who are running op's of equivalent size please advise me on the best way to go. I should mention that if I were to do this in a house I would not be living in the house, only attending to the grow daily and spending as much time as necessary to give the appearance of living there.
I am really at a loss as to which way to go because I can see advantages and disadvantages to each. Any and all help, comments, or suggestions are appreciated and welcomed. I need your input please.

 

[yamaha_1fan]

Ditch the portable A/C's. they suck

You going to flip flop it? you probably should

what is that? 7200w for flower? That aint a big deal.


If you go warehouse, set it up for personal use, no business license

 

[manwithnoname]

listen to the guy above me. he knows his shit

 

[bass ackwards]

Yamaha_1fan, thanks for the response I'm new here but not so new that I haven't noticed your expertise. You run larger ops than mine I have noticed. If you believe I'm not pushing the limits for a home grow I feel somewhat better. No disrespect intended but I would sure like to get that same feedback from others.
Actually 7200w is only what I will be using for the lights for two grow rooms, as I said when you take into consideration the electrical usage for chillers,fans,a/c units,carbon filters,CFL's and pumps I'm getting near 100kw. That amount of usage scares me because I'm sure that usage would be substantially higher than other houses in the neighborhood. I have visions of an electric meter spinning off the side of the house.

manwithnoname listen to the guy above me. he knows his shit

Yes he does!

 

[yamaha_1fan]

scroll a few pages down through the legal section. This comes up every week, "how much electrical can I run in my house". You'll see responses like mine.

I run very close to 11KW in lighting between flower and veg. I also have a 24K BTU A/C, plus several pumps, fans etc. And I live here with a family. Our bill is through the roof. fuck it

I have only heard of one area, austin texas where LEO asked the power company to go through their records and find large users. And that tactic has been questioned as whether its legal or not. Thats the only case I have heard of.

Go a few posts down, and someone says the power company snitched a grow house. Yeah they pulled the meter for non payment and heard electric items still running. The growers bypassed the meter.

Grow houses getting busted based on pure usage is not common


Cali is the heart of marijuana growing. Didnt you watch CNBC and national geographic? If they just went by useage, I think you would hear of alot more cali growers getting knocked off


How big is the house? Your grow is 2500 KWH per month, about $400 in my area.

 

[manwithnoname]

right now i've got 2200w in lights alone, no problems

 

[its420]

$400 What? WHAT??? Man im getting screwed!!! I had to run my 2 1k lights 24/7 to pull moms out of flower for a 'friend', $800 bucks a month later he skated with the moms, leaving me with $3200 elec bill and the wasted use of my lights/space for 4 months.

Check with your power company and find out how the billing works, if they have a baseline set (mines 11 cents/kw) then they jack the rates up quick to where I pay 44 cents a kw.

Solar is looking better all the time. 12g a year in elec or 24g in solar panels to get off the grid (in cali the state will pay half your bill to switch to solar)
PEACE & Good luck, stay safe....dont skimp on elec connections, go 240 if you can, dont over load stuff

420

 

[whodi]

two rooms 4800 watts each and veg room with 2000 watts is about $485 where i'm at - .09 KW/h

pay your bill

 

[DIGITALHIPPY]

your fine, im pulling 175+/-kwh per day stay below 200kwh/day and u should be ok, just pay the bill, get extentions, just dont steal=poped.

 

[bass ackwards]

Yamaha, I will do as you say and search the forum.I should have done this before posting maybe I would have gotten my answer that way. It seems I pissed you off,for that I apologize.

Manwithnoname, 2200w is close to what I will be doing and you say no problem, that is good to hear. Thank you for that.

its420, Residential usage here is 18 cents/kw. Commercial on 1yr. contract is
6 cents/kw.

whodi, 12000kw ? and no problems that is very good to hear. Would you mind my asking if that is residential or commercial. I am assuming you are saying residential.

DIGITALHIPPY, Are you also speaking residential ? If so I am feeling all warm and fuzzy.

 

[whodi]

Ya residential... it's like running 6 1000 watt computer servers 24/7 for your e-comemrce business or hosting gaming servers, etc... shouldn't be a big deal as far as they are concerned.

 

[antimatter]

your fine, even if you were running 50 lights they wont just bust in your door they would send out a fire chief/inspector and give you 24 hours notice to check for fire hazards and if you refused they would cut your power after 24 hours but you wouldn't get raided just don't steal. If your have a welding/machine shop on a residential property with a separate service you can run pretty high.

 

[manwithnoname]

na, guessing u didnt piss yamaha off. nothing wrong with questions. i do a lot of that myself. seems to me everyone here is always happy to help. this site rocks! cant say how many hundreds of hours i've spent on here.

 

[yamaha_1fan]

nah, you didnt piss me off. If I was mad, I would have left it at "do a search"

I just know alot of people wont chime in over and over, so thats why I suggested doing a search, to get all the different answers and opinions

 

[bass ackwards]

Whodi, Never thought of servers, probably because I know very little about computers. Still, something to consider, thanks again.

antimatter, Thanks very much for that insight as to what to expect should they come knocking. You have no idea how much that has relieved me. Welding equipment you say. I will look into that.

manwithnoname, Once again you are correct. After being told I did feel as though I was asking questions to commonly asked and that I should have done a search before jumping in as I did. As has been stated people do get tired of answering the same question time after time.

Yamaha_1fan, Glad to hear I didn't. Just so you know, although I haven't spent as much time as I could have, I have started doing a page by page search of this forum looking for answers (only five pages so far though). Later I will use the search function on electrical usage. I have taken your advise.

Again I would like to thank each and every one of you, your responses have been most helpful.

Anyone else reading this who feels they have something to add, either positive or negative please feel free to do so. Your responses will be appreciated and acknowledged.

Respect bass

 

[sparkjumper]

Electrical consumption is utility approved lol,electrical theft isnt.My point is Ive been running well over 5K in a small 1000 ft house for years.One good tip if you can do it is to shut down,or mostly)when the meter is being read.Fortunately is says on my bill the next reading and a block fulla mans best friend lets me know he's comin.

 

[its420]

Anyone done any research into solar they can point me to?

 

[antimatter]

antimatter, Thanks very much for that insight as to what to expect should they come knocking. You have no idea how much that has relieved me. Welding equipment you say. I will look into that.

In BC Canada thats what they do its a loophole for them to check on things without having a warrant if you catch my drift so its not a minor thing, but atleast you can clean your stuff up and not have to worry about a raid. Theres a difference to checking for fire hazards and suspecting a growop and building a case for a full on search warrant raid, BCHydro for example has a department just for finding grow ops, they can see just how much current is running into a house by looking on a computer that has all the grid information, if its exceptionally high they may send out there guy to check for fire hazards but there are legitimate reasons for that, I personally would not run over 9kw worth of lights in a house in a system like that without a diesel generator but once again if you have a shop on a separate service they really are at no authority to go in and check for a fire hazard in a machine shop (example) pulling a lot of current.

 

[antimatter]

Anyone done any research into solar they can point me to?

Your gonna be looking at 30 grand for a constant 4Kw and that may not be accurate since I would think it would depend on how cloudy the days are and how much Sun that particular area would get.

 

[bass ackwards]

antimatter, yes, you have a point about a machine shop. I was thinking something along those lines myself when I spoke of using industrial/commercial space. In reality I was thinking of a wood shop rather than a machine shop just because the equipment is cheaper although I am competent with all types of equipment used for each. When I start up I will post pictures of my custom built system.

sparkjumper, Sorry I forgot about you. You are correct about being cautious concerning the meter readers. That was what I was referring to with my comment about the meter spinning off the wall. Here in my area we do not always know when the meter reader is coming. Just the thought of the reader seeing the meter disc spinning like a top sends shivers up my spine. That to me is the biggest drawback to growing in a home. The meter reader see's that and reports it and who knows what happens next!