Stephen Rees's blog

BC Hydro: 18,000 Grow-ops suspected

My letter to the editor

Your front page exclusive has me worried. Am I a suspect? Our average daily consumption is over 93 kWh for most of the winter. That’s because we do not have natural gas, or oil. We use baseboard heaters. And, when we are feeling really festive, we use an open hearth log fire, which makes a mess, smells nice, looks pretty and sends nearly all the heat up the chimney. But my real worry is the same set of consumption records shows that in July this year our consumption actually increased. Last year it was less than 10kWh, this year over 60! It is the record itself which I distrust as in reality power consumption was probably the same. We will never know because BC Hydro admitted that they “estimated” my meter reading and it would even out over the months when they actually read the meter.

Latest update – the letter was published on Friday Sptember 1, without the illustration or the picture of the author.

Addendum: the silliness of the proposal to check out those with high meter readings ignores the widespread practice in grow ops of bypassing the meter. The obvious dangers of interfering with live wires is supposedly one of the main reasons for cracking down on grow ops.