Salutations Draculic Acid69,
...they don't use anywhere near as much electricity...
It's not only about the
amount but also its associated
profile (e.g. relatively to time). So please read the manufacturer's own documentation in search for further details if/when given an opportunity, for example:
Vancouver Sun: New B.C. Hydro devices save millions of dollars from cannabis-growing power thieves (2016-Nov-4)
« Now, B.C. Hydro has permanently installed 4,000 “check meters” — TGI Raptor 3 sensors manufactured by Vancouver firm Awesense Solutions. These are hooked directly to overhead lines so staff can wirelessly and securely pinpoint where power is going. An additional 1,000 Raptors are moved around as needed.
B.C. Hydro uses more than 10,000 measurement points on the grid to concentrate inspections in areas where there are losses. »
M'well, it's not like we won't find the brand & model directly marked on our own meters anyway.
Too bad if it still needs to be repeated so many years later but it turns out the days of wishfull thinking are history, so don't even expect random household appliances to mute crystal-precision signaling which clearly falls above the hundred Watts range, much less with an antenna directly monitoring our plant's power input!
Make no mistake, it's never been about theft only... YMMV, especially depending on the province:
SRC: Hydro-Québec veut s'attaquer à la contrebande de cannabis (2016-Aug-13)
« L'électricité comme arme contre la contrebande
Le gouvernement du Québec consacrera 10 millions de dollars par année pour lutter contre la contrebande de cannabis, à l'image de ce qui se fait pour le tabac ou l'alcool. Comme l'énergie est l'une des principales dépenses dans la production de la drogue, Hydro-Québec croit pouvoir jouer un rôle important. »
In concrete terms this translates as police operations, for example:
SRC: 19 arrestations dans le cadre du démantèlement d'un réseau de production de cannabis (2017-Jun-6)
« Près d’une centaine de policiers, provenant aussi des services de police de l’agglomération de Longueuil, de Laval et de Roussillon, ont pris part à cette opération. Revenu Québec et Hydro-Québec y ont également collaboré. »
Those meters are not only designed to monitor individual client consumption, they actually form a collective net capable of indirectly detecting "defects" OUTSIDE of the measured grid, registered in 3-D for posterity as i pointed out... So maybe you'll get lucky as a result of some human factor(s), but anyway keep in mind the data remains obvious and objective long after harvest, even once a garden is gone!
Human thinking is most inadequate here, just because 12/12 LED indoor gardens have only 2 beats a day this doesn't mean they're free of any specific signature at all, quite on the contrary... Although it's quite another timescale which we can't perceive with our natural senses that's no less real and valid, so even if one could deal with his consumption pedestal (by balancing total load to make it flat-looking through time) all residual transitions would still show up unaffected in the time-domain unless such switch-over events are carefully masked by a regulating buffer, possibly complemented by a mix of delayed redistribution and fake signatures, euh... Notice the agravation in search for absolutes?
In any case nothing i can imagine happens to "sing" like indoor cultivation in the flowering phase! To say otherwise is like pretending sunlight is black... In other words some of us may prefer not to have their electricity bills associated to it and theft only makes the situation worse.
Good day, have fun!! ☮
