According to a motion the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed in Sacramento Superior Court last week, Nguyen and Decker are only two of more than 33,000 Sacramento-area people who have been flagged to the sheriff’s department by the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, the electricity provider for the region. SMUD called the customers out for using what it and department investigators said were suspiciously high amounts of electricity indicative of illegal cannabis farming.
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.