Growing with a Smart Meter?

Hey guys so I recently found out about a thing called a smart meter and realized I have one installed!!!
I am also purchasing power and hydro from the city,


With the smart meter, they can bill you on the time you use energy but also tell WHEN your using it ,
Right now I run my lights at 600w (675w usage) from 7pm-7am (off peak hour) and dim my ballast to 400w during the day (mid/peak hours).

I know 600w isnt much to get caught but since they can tell when its on , wont they notice that I have 675w running all night while I sleep, or at least notice my patterns from my timer? At the moment my plants are in veg running 24/0 but should I switch to 18/6 to reduce usage a bit?

Also would it be smart to run my lights during peak hours and just pay the extra $$ because during the day people use electricity... so it will look like usage? Rather than having it on all night.

Also when switching to 12/12 wont they notice the big spike in usage? ~675w on, and off at the same time?

I am getting a bit worried now because im purchasing from the city too !

What are your thoughts, I really dont want to scrap the project right now as im almost ready to flower

Bro relax.
Idn your city size but if it's even 25000 I doubt they are watching all the meters for growing light spikes. Not to mention all the false positives they would get.

Your utilities are out to make a profit like a business not an elaborate government entity.

No, they wont notice and they dont care. they want your money. Until you install like 10 1000watt HPS lights, they do not give a shit about your light. Sorry to disappoint you, but you arent big enough for them to care (and thats a good thing )

Jorgewashington said:

Bro relax.
Idn your city size but if it's even 25000 I doubt they are watching all the meters for growing light spikes. Not to mention all the false positives they would get.

Your utilities are out to make a profit like a business not an elaborate government entity.

Click to expand...

The population is about 100k people. It is a smaller town , takes about 15 mins from one end to the other driving. And I wouldnt suspect that either, they use smart meters to find stolen electricity or "leaks" but I was worried that they might have possible usage algorithms? or even programs that check for suspicious usage.

CourageToGrow said:

No, they wont notice and they dont care. they want your money. Until you install like 10 1000watt HPS lights, they do not give a shit about your light. Sorry to disappoint you, but you arent big enough for them to care (and thats a good thing )

Click to expand...

Yeah I dont even want to be anywhere near 1k worth of lights let alone 10k! , only thing that really worried me is that it's coming from the city *facepalm*.
But I was checking news articles recently, theyve had a huge pot bust in a factory barn or something, another one was a larger indoor one with 200+ plants, and a smaller one 2 weeks ago with 26 plants... I was thinking of a SOG grow with about as much plants if not a few more. ~25plants with a 600w... Ill yield what ... 1 pound as my first grow with a street value of 2.5-3k , but the news would consider this small grow something worth 25k ... Thats where my paranoia kicks in!!

I should be alright though, I'm going to flick my lights to 18/6 for another week before I take clones.

Any other input will be appreciated

I just posted a question on these meters...prob shoulda read more first....im thinking that once all appliances and so on in circulation have the smart meter compatable chip ,when this happens there will be trouble ahead, in BC, they are using this technology to catch growers already, they compare historic consumption to current consumption(for a given address)...they have used this method for years,,, now its just more simplified, and easier to get warrents as they can show this data in a comprehensive way to a Judge.......im worried!

best thing .....get your self busted on purpose....but only have tomatoes.....no judge will give the cops a second search warrent for that address....(old trick)

my bill went down after they installed the smart meter. I live in cali and i'm legal. why would they bust a paying customer that will net nothing?