UK - Police swoop on solar powered drugs factory

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edgarshade

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The Argus

2:00pm Friday 1st February 2013
By Anna Roberts

With reader comments

A huge cannabis factory powered by more than one hundred solar panels has been discovered by police. Up to 115 solar panels were found installed on the roof of a warehouse building after police were alerted to reports of cannabis being cultivated. A man who works just yards from the factory, containing 1,000 plants worth £500,000, last night said: “They must be Sussex’s greenest suspected drug dealers. “The roof of the building where the drugs were found is absolutely covered in solar panels – absolutely covered.

“They have been there for about six months and we thought it was strange. “No other building in the estate has solar panels like that. And they are not your conventional ones. They are industrial-style panels.” Another woman who works at the Mackley Industrial Estate, Henfield Road, Small Dole, near Henfield, where the plants were discovered on Tuesday, January 29 said: “There were police at the back of the estate but it is massive.”

A Sussex Police spokeswoman refused to confirm exactly how many solar panels were used.
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More...
http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/10201097.Police_swoop_on_solar_powered_drugs_factory/
 
that's fucking awesome except they got caught. 1000 plants is nothing though. I know a guy who got caught growing 3000 and got house arrest for 6 months in Canada.

My school runs off solar panels that adjust to the sun and windmills, and all sorts of green shit, it's really cool to have a self sustaining system and this should be the future but big oil companies are buying up these technologies and shelving them to keep us hooked on oil and gas, some day the tide will turn. Americans are gas guzzlers but go to a place like montreal or amsterdam and you see that is the future, everyone riding bicycles, cars not being economical and people generally being concerned about the planet and the future of it, not to mention gas prices just go up and up anyway. Sorry bit off topic.
 
RobotRipping said:
go to a place like montreal or amsterdam and you see that is the future, everyone riding bicycles, cars not being economical and people generally being concerned about the planet and the future of it, not to mention gas prices just go up and up anyway. Sorry bit off topic.
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Awesome. Good to know that there are affluent regions which care about clean energy.
 
there are tons of regions like this and it's becoming more and more popular. Though big corporations are trying their mightiest to slow it down, technology is just progressing too fast for them. There is a huge future for renewable energy and things like that, i'll likely be studying the electronics side of renewable energy next year, but yeah more places should be like this, namely NA in general. It isn't that difficult to completely reduce your carbon footprint (it will be easier as technology progresses as well), even if you are a corporation.
 
I have 12 panels on my roof at home, I get great savings in summer, my quarterly bills in the summer months are next to nothing (I got a credit last summer of 60 bucks), but in winter it doesn't do much. I also have solar hot water, which again only works great in summer here, mainly because in the winter months the sun is on a different tangent and is behind trees and the isn't very strong then. It cost a fair bit to pay for, but over the 7 or so years that they (the government) promise to pay the maximum rate (in my case it's 60 c a kw that we pump back into the grid) it should pay for itself and more I hope. The problem here is that the government subsidies have finished and the rate has gone right down now to 20c a kw for grid feedback. So it's not so affordable or worth it to instal it them anymore for personal use on houses. They lowered the rate and took away the subsidies because it was too popular and too many people took it up apparently. Shame.
 
sekio said:
Also, isn't every outdoor grow op a 'solar powered drug factory?' Even mushrooms.
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I was going to say, I wouldn't be suprised if that's what the media were calling a garden.

No other building in the estate has solar panels like that. And they are not your conventional ones. They are industrial-style panels.
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Industrial style panels on an industrial estate? That is weird, I'd expect industry to use panels salvaged from old calculators.
 
Electricity Bills is what catches most cannabis farms in the UK so I guess its a smart option, most farms tap into the electricity grid ilegally anyway but once the companys start to investigate where the missing power its going it never ends well.
 
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