$100M in electricity stolen by pot growers annually: Hydro

VANCOUVER – BC Hydro estimates that theft of electricity by illegal marijuana growing operations costs the utility $100 million a year.

“And it might well be higher than that,” said Fiona Taylor, BC Hydro’s director of smart metering and infrastructure.

The theft is the equivalent of a three-per-cent increase in customers’ hydro bills each year, she said.

In 2006, Hydro commissioned three independent studies that found 500 gigawatt hours (GWh) a year were being stolen from the grid by grow operations, she said.

That study is being refreshed, said Taylor, and new estimates show 850 GWh a year are now being stolen.

“That’s enough electricity to power 77,000 homes a year,” she said.

However, the utility is fighting back and the new $930-million Smart Meter program, which will be introduced over the next couple of years, will combat much of this theft, Taylor said.

“Today we are operating blind. This system will allow us to follow the flow of electricity from point to point. We will be able to see at a macro-level what is happening.

“We’ll be able to see how much came into a line. We’ll know what the residential meter reads so we will be able to detect any anomalies, and special software will detect if there’s been a theft from a power pole,” she said.

She said the business plan for introducing the meters shows that Hydro will recover $1.5 billion in savings over 20 years.

“We expect to break even on the cost after eight years.”

As for criticism that the new metering system could be hijacked by hackers, Taylor said Hydro was employing the best cyber security organizations in the world to ensure that didn’t happen.

“We’ve even employed hackers to try to break in,” she said.

Since 2006, there have been 2,618 recorded cases of power theft from BC Hydro – the majority in connection with marijuana growing operations.

And while the number of thefts have remained about the same year-to-year, the amount of electricity being stolen has increased by 40 per cent this year compared to what was stolen in 2006.

Also this year Hydro started deploying special investigators into the Interior and will increase field inspections across all areas of the province next year.

The following is a list of detected thefts year by year:

“¢ 2006: 539

“¢ 2007: 430

“¢ 2008: 594

“¢ 2009: 497

“¢ 2010 (to date): 558.

gbellett@vancouversun.com