B.C.Hydro and the Cops

[Green Supreme]

Anyone read the Vancouver Sun article yesterday about B.C.Hydro helping the Cops find grow ops?

[plantbuilder]

camp also shares with bc rcmp regarding outdoor flyovers
remember that story about the texas ranger and the speeding ticket?
i think bc hydro is helping the rcmp to find big grow ops
not mine
peace
i didn't read the article however
do i like supplying the us with 10 billion dollars of cannabis every year?
i guess so
no one ever asked me
plantbuilder

[Tug]

I think the relevant words in the article were 'excessive hydro usage'.
If you've got that issue then you'd be wise to concern yourself, or educate yourself better, personally I don't have that problem, I never have a bigger setup than I can handle all by myself should the need arise.

Sounds a lot like 'big-brother' scare tactics to me, I know someone who was affected by this issue last time during the experimental phase, and if a 48 hr notice isn't enough time for you to take care of your place, you're in the wrong business, or careless/foolish, IMO.

peace - Tug

[spacegrass]

not to mention the fact they are going after really big commercial operations....and fuck those guys anyways.

sg

[c-ray]

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=d914d3a4-7e03-429c-a8ec-0c7bf2e4a9cc

[QUOTE]
Homes that show unusually high power use can be targeted by cities in hunt for pot growers

Chad Skelton, Vancouver Sun
Published: Thursday, August 31, 2006

Nearly 18,000 homes in B.C. -- about the same number of residences as in all of West Vancouver -- use suspiciously high amounts of electricity, often a telltale sign of a marijuana growing operation.

Under provincial legislation introduced last spring, municipalities can request a list from BC Hydro of all addresses with abnormally high power consumption -- making it easier for police and city inspectors to target growing operations.

Abnormal consumption is defined as any residence that uses more than 93 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per day (the average home uses 31 kWh a day).

In July, The Vancouver Sun filed a freedom of information request with BC Hydro asking how many of its residential customers fit that definition.

The reply: 17,900. In comparison, there are 17,299 homes in West Vancouver.

Hydro said it was unable to provide a city-by-city breakdown of where the high-consumption homes are located, because it has not yet produced any such lists for municipalities.

But a rough estimate based on each city's share of B.C.'s population suggests there could be 2,500 high-consumption homes in Vancouver, 1,700 in Surrey and 900 in Burnaby.

And Delta -- which has just eight officers in its entire drug section -- could soon be getting a list of about 450.

Sgt. Harj Sidhu, head of the Delta police drug section, said dealing with that volume of tips will be a challenge.

"Is it going to be easy? No," he said. "Obviously that's going to mean we'll have to come up with some systematic approach to deal with those numbers. We're going to have to start whittling that list down."

Sidhu said the drug unit may require extra officers to tackle the list or could risk "burnout" among his staff.

Vancouver police spokesman Const. Howard Chow agreed the lists could pose a challenge.

"Undoubtedly, if the numbers are huge, it will take a while to get through them," he said.

Growing operations require massive amounts of electricity. But until recently, BC Hydro, citing privacy legislation, would only release information on a home's electricity consumption to police or municipal inspectors if they already had an address under investigation.

Under the new law, Hydro and other electricity providers will be required to provide -- to any city that asks for it -- a list of all addresses in their jurisdiction with high consumption, plus two years' billing records for each address.

Sidhu said he hopes those billing records will help police decide which of the hundreds of addresses to target -- since the largest growing operations also use the most electricity.

"Logically speaking, that's the only way we'd be able to deal with it," he said.

Hydro and the police caution that not all homes with high electricity consumption are growing operations.

Hot tubs and swimming pools, for example, can cause increased electricity use.

BC Hydro spokeswoman Elisha Moreno said the utility will provide municipalities with a software tool to help them interpret the data -- by, for example, identifying consumption patterns that are consistent with winter baseboard heating.

Moreno said the utility has so far received only one request for consumption data from a municipality and should be sending out its first list of addresses within the next month.

She wouldn't identify which municipality had made the request.

While police will have access to the electricity consumption lists, the information can also be used by city inspectors and fire departments to shut down growing operations without a criminal investigation.

cskelton@png.canwest.com

[vapor]

When me and vc were busted last year the cops used this one,although it had not been implamented yet... GET OFF THE GRID

[spacegrass]

any suggestions on how big you have to be to stand out or be a target? 93 kmh seems a little lower than I would have expected for sure. when I said fuck those guys I meant the dudes with 15 or 20 bulbs...no offence if you run that much light :teeth:...it just pisses me off that there is so much weed in this province and our local club struggles to find a below-street price supplier.

it would be interesting to do the math and see how much of BC Hydro's gross revenues are from grow-ops.

sg

[c-ray]

according to that more than 6k flowering and 1k veg will put one on the list

[Tug]

What a joke that figure is. I live in a decent looking 3 bedroom house in a decent neighbourhood in Surrey, and this place uses 60+ KW hours/day without any lights running and just 2 people living here.
When I first moved I had a room-mate, I called BC Hydro and enquired, they said my consumption had gone down since the previous tenant, so we fired up 4 bulbs and his girlfriend moved in, 115 KW hours/day in the winter months (lousy insulation).
He moved out, I now have 6 - 8 going at any given time, and I use 83 - 93 KW hours/day in summer.

I guess if there is an investigation, Hydro will accuse ME of excessive consumption so they can get me, even though my bill is only $225 month, less than the 5 people who lived here before.
I wonder, is George Bush running BC Hydro? hahahahahahahahahaha

Remember, use more gas too when firing up lights (I run extra laundry to compensate), as a high Hydro bill but no increase in Gas looks funny on their books.

peace - Tug

[Slarty]

What if you live out in the sticks and are not under any municipality? Am I out of their reach since there is no municipality to request my records?

[vapor]

if they want it slarty then will get it...

[Slarty]

I am a bit over 93kwhrs. but it doesn't worry me at all. A four bedroom home on an acreage with a two car garage and work space. I just figure police would need a court order to get my records if there is no municipality to request them..... and if it's to that point you're already fucked.

[tj_142]

Thats anything greater then 3.87kw per hour people.................1000watts = 1 kw


4 x 1000watters

[Alaska]

So, lets be positive and think what we could do with 3800 watts 24/7.


If we used my garden method as described in my "Get growing alaskan style", we could put 4x 600 hps on flips, yeilding between an easy 4-5lbs/month. Also use a 400 watt for one mother, and theres a couple hundred left for clone machines and extraction fans. Even in CA thats a decent chunch per month to still fly under the radar.

A

[Dman]

That number is a joke...LOL! :D

I'm looking at my July/Aug Hydro bill...143 kWh/day....and that's up from 106 last year at this time. 2600 sq/ft, 4 bedroom house...4 people, and roughly 4k of sunshine indoors! :)

Don't give them any reasons to flag your account. Pay your bill on time, everytime! ;)

Slarty>>> Are you with Hydro One? If so...they don't give a shit how much you use as long as you pay your bill on time my friend.

[Slarty]

I'm with BC Hydro. My June/July bill had 119kwh/day. I'm not worried about hydro, family is more of a worry.

[Green Supreme]

My friend did some research on this article and found out it was the newspaper that requested the list not the cops.Perhaps this list is not in Leos hand.Peace GS

[Lugen007]

I find that it's ONLY in the newspaper hands.

It's only a matter of time until all the provinces adapt this by law

[Green Supreme]

Its only a matter of time before someone challenges the new law. Once they bust someone whos not doing anything it'll get challenged as an invasion of privacy. See how it goes from there Peace GS

[The Cannarchist]

DMan is right.
Pay your bill on time
The computer doesn't "see" much if you fulfill it;s criteria.

[Zero Hero]

Anyone know anything about how something like this applies to Australia?