This would be a great marketting opportunity for a Solar/Battery company.
Be green while growing the green, without being Narced on by the power company.
Add some fish and you have a Permaculture setup!
This would be a great marketting opportunity for a Solar/Battery company.
Be green while growing the green, without being Narced on by the power company.
Add some fish and you have a Permaculture setup!
This was happening in the UK for a while until like the sixth time they raided a teenage crypto-kiddie
This sucks because it’s an invasion of privacy. But it also sucks because SMUD is an otherwise great utility.
why do they even care? they get to sell more power
Using more electricity than average? Get automatically raided!
Yeah sounds pretty fucked up to me.
not quite -- it's if you're using 3.5x more electricity than average. Still seems fucked up from my lemmy-eye view though.
Police raided my house because our electricity usage was 4x my neighbors.
They 'surveilled' my house and then got a search warrant which said they saw Metal Halide lights, which, in this pig's expert opinion are only used for growing Marijuana (they're used for literally everything that grows under the sun). Tinfoil on the window, which "is used in marijuana grow operations" and because I had a window AC unit "used in grow houses to cool the lights".
When they showed up despite not there obviously not being a grow operations, they destroyed my house, punched holes in the walls, unseated my toilets, pulled my grandfather's military burial flag out of it's case and unfolded it. Then left it on the ground, stepping on it as they searched. They also stole $125 in cash off of my desk.
They found a few saltwater tanks full of corals and 4 people with gaming PCs. There was no money to cover the damages, no apology, just 'well you guys are free to go' and then they left.
It doesn't matter to them if their flawed methods have false positives, they're protected from any liability personal or otherwise.
Remember kids: if you see something, no you didn’t. Move along and mind your business.
Domestic abusers appreciate your support.
Fuck those people, we wasn't talking about those people. Common sense something or another.
Ha ha I'm in danger!
I have a hydroponics setup that would make pot growers jealous but I grow chili's and tomatoes in it.
So we get this tip, chief, water and power bills, big trash bags, the usual. We go in hot break the door kill the dog all by the book, and you wont believe what we see:
Santorini, Tiny Tim, Tomaccio, Big Beef, well lit in these pristine pots like its fucking Breaking Bad. All the while the owner's blabbering how it's a mistake and this isn't for sale, we've all heard it.
So I put them down and go check the cellar just in case, and this is where the worst of it was. H1776-2023, the pesticide resistant variation, straight from Monsanto labs.
Naturally the sick bastard had an accident on the way, let the coroner do the booking.
My gaming desktop and basement server uses enough power to be flagged as a grow. Fuck these guys gonna hassle me for being a geek.
i remember there were false flags that were raised before when crypto mining operations were flagged as an illegal weed operation
Cops:
We suspect you have a grow operation.
Nerds:
I've certainly been growing the size of my LAN.
Wanna know the difference between growing weed indoors and growing anything else indoors?
Nothing. Fuck off. I’m growing extremely hot peppers indoors with my kilowatts of LEDs.
Yeah, despite the wording, I suspect they are looking at the patterns of use with smart meters rather than just "high amounts?" Grow op houses would be easy to see, as they only use power when the lights are on, flat usage, because no one is actually living there. Do you run lights 24x7 with indoor growing? idk. The trouble is, any system like this will catch a few, then they will relax the constraints to "catch more" and boom, now you have false positives. The criminals will also figure it out and mask their usage better by cycling banks of lighting, using batteries, parking some EVs in the driveway or whatever. That cat-and-mouse game will just see increasing privacy invasion and more false positives.
It’s definitely the patterns. What I’m saying is the patterns are not any different for cannabis versus any other photoperiod plant. Cannabis isn’t the only thing you veg under 18/6 and flower under 12/12 light cycles. It’s not illegal to grow plants indoors and if I spend 5kW doing it every day that’s nobody’s business but my own. I’ll use my joules however I feel.
That said, it seems like the way to defeat this type of analysis would be to invest in batteries so you can always have a constant 24h drain rather than 5kW turning on every day at the same time for 18 or 12 hours.
Yeah, batteries or cycling different banks at different overlapping intervals so the the household draw averages out to a more reasonable usage pattern. Easy for the criminals to defeat, resulting in false-positives in their detection scheme.
Of course modern criminals are smart. /s
The good ones are. The poor ones suffer the consequences of their own actions. With modern tech crime advances faster under no regulations than laws can. The problem is uneducated criminals lol
You seem to know a lot about we..., I mean, electricity. Tell us more 🤣🤣
By the way, I'm just joking, as these companies are just getting more dystopian by the second.
Sounds like time to run either a food grow op or Folding@Home on a schedule to create false alarms
Are they fucking stupid? If your customer is in jail then they wont be giving you money for your product.
I keep several exotic pets and plants none of which are pot but even if it was mind your fucking business. it is none of your concern why my power bill is stupidly high.
I thought the LEDs use way less power than the grow lights of old, I guess not!
It's still the main power drain in a grow room. I use custom LED strips designed to minimize power waste and for 8 plant pots i have to use at least 250W of power just on the lighting.
Electricity grid is like cloud compute.
Better to self-host and run solar or alternative power.
My guess is that the timing and consumption rates are so regularly frequent that it becomes obvious when comparing historical periods.
I have a number of indoor grow systems that have LED lights on a timer. I guess now I need to start worrying about the police raiding my house to seize my crop of lettuce and tomatoes.
Is growing illegal in California? Even in Connecticut which has rather draconian legal cannabis laws you're allowed to grow for personal use
Who the hell grows indoors in California? It has the best climate for outdoor cannabis
This is a drawback to municipal power supply. Not that private companies all over the US haven't also ratted out growers, but PG&E would fuckin never lol.
Another great reason to get solar panels
Ideally, set up a battery and inverter system in your house, and turn the charging rate up or down depending on what other electric devices you are using at any given moment. Idea is to keep your power consumption exactly the same regardless of what you are doing at home. That way you give no information to the power company.
The average usage in California is 756 kWh per month* and police are called at 2700 kWh per month. I'm sure the energy company are wondering why the house is using 3 months energy in one month. It used to be 7000 kWh per month so it was probibly garinteed that rather they where in the wrong service (bussness and commercial rate) or its a grow house.
As mentioned elsewhere your house and the grid is not rated for this level of energy for long periods of time and ether the company cuts you off or your house burns down.
*https://www.solarinsure.com/average-cost-of-electricity-per-month-in-california
How the hell do people usée over 700kwh per month on average? Do people leave their AC on 24/7 OE something ?
As mentioned elsewhere your house and the grid is not rated for this level of energy for long periods of time and ether the company cuts you off or your house burns down.
A typical main breaker in the US is rated for 150 amps, general rule of thumb is breakers are safe for 80% of their rated load continuously. At 110v, that 150 amp panel is good for 13.2kw. Over a 30 day month that's 9,500 kwh.
Anyone using 7000kwh a month is likely on a 200 or 300 amp panel. By the same math above that's 12,700kwh and 19,000kwh.
7,000kwh is well within safe usage of a normal home under a uniform load, definitely so with a 2 or 300amp main breaker.
Ffs an electric car with a home fast charger pulls nearly 12kw on a single outlet. That plus a fridge and AC running in the house would be too much for a standard 150amp service.
In the Trump dictatorship, nothing is illegal except when he can use it against his enemies.
I forgot what documentary I saw, but electronic companies can also decipher what your computer is doing, and eavesdrop your residence by manipulating the wattages sent. Which in why security experts rec. PSU banking, Faraday caging, and noise filtering.
can't seem to find the video, but some sources: https://www.vice.com/en/article/your-smart-electricity-meter-can-easily-spy-on-you-court-ruling-warns/ https://smartgridawareness.org/privacy-and-data-security/how-smart-meters-invade-individual-privacy/ https://www.energy.gov/gc/articles/department-energy-data-access-and-privacy-issues-related-smart-grid-technologies
I don't know enough about this topic to judge what is / isn't wrong with this comment. Could someone who is downvoting also reply to explain what's wrong?
The articles relate to tracking behaviour (IE watching TV, playing video games, cooking, showering, sleeping, out & about), not deciphering what your computer is doing.
Maybe they can tell if you are just browsing the internet, or if you are playing video games. But you could just as easily be training AI models, rendering some animations, 3d modelling or mining buttcoin.
The articles allude to "knowing it's a computer being used" because the noise of it's PSU is different than lightbulbs or fridges.
Data centers use UPS battery banks to provide persistent power during a power outage to cover the gap before backup generators start up.
Data centers use power smoothing systems to protect wiring and switch gear, as well as fixing the Power Factor - which will drastically reduce their electricity bill.
The power required to generate 00001111 Vs 11110000 is the same from an outside perspective. 4 bits on, 4 bits off. And computers have a word size of 64 bits. That's a lot of permutations that a miniscule ripple in current might indicate.
And all ICs in a computer will have local decoupling caps (because the same power noise that "can be decoded by a power meter" interferes with the ICs, so it is filtered).
And the the SMPS will have some chonky smoothing caps, and the MOSFETs chopping that at 100kHz or whatever. Lots of smoothing, and lots of more significant noise sources.
Nothing upstream of the PSU is going to be able to read what's going on inside a PC, other than "it's drawing a few watts more".
Now, maybe there are security minded companies that take things to the extreme.
Having a central DC power system that powers 100s of servers has the benefit of mixing all that potential noise together into an even more incomprehensible noise.
So, I can see some companies spending tens of thousands more just in case someone manages to break physics. Because 20k on an install could save millions later.
But if they are paying that much attention to the data security of power, I hope it's an air gapped system.
Or they've been sold some snake oil.
Seriously, noise on the power is not a data security issue.
It is a privacy issue if power companies are tracking it that closely, because they can model your behaviour.
Which is what the articles are talking about
I think he is mistaking the method of power analysis to defeat cryptography with whatever the fuck he's talking about
For the record, board power analysis cannot be done by your power provider
Thanks! That is helpful, I appreciate it
Just a side note - while the original comment wasn't directly speaking about this, and something like this requires way more precise instruments amd can't be done just from your total energy consumption, it is kind of possible to in theory decode/steal data from your PC based on it's pwer consumption, such as stealing private cryptography keys.
It's mostly theoretical and very specific attack, but I find things like that super cool so I kist wanted to share them. The whole area of Side channel attacks is cool.
same, I'm preplexed, when the other thread is literally proving what I'm warning about.
Electronic magnetic interference and light bending tracking is something we've known for awhile in physics.
Utility company execs need to be hunted like dogs electrical substations and weather radar.
uhhhh... hasnt this been happening for like 40 years? i assumed it was sop for utilities decades ago
As an old person, I recall this same story making the headlines in the late 1970's. Next headline will include advice on how not to raise suspicion. I assume solar and wind are the method that is replacing diesel generators.
Right?
And why many have gone to significant lengths over the years.
LED changed that so much the power utility probably has to use different tools to find them.
Besides, power company stats are so bad they say I use 2x-3x the power of "comparable homes" in a 7 mile radius.
Holy cow powerman, that's the entire metro region.
Oh, and "comparable homes" are upwards of 50% larger (or smaller).
Im surprised they get the bill right with stats like that.
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