Close call.

[Mattb4]

The solar patrol is usually not out flying the County on Saturday mornings searching for illegal solar installations. So I had the camouflage netting down off my solar panels to maximize my solar production when I heard the ominous "Whup-whup" of helicopter blades coming up the Valley. It was quite the scramble to cover everything back up so as to go undetected. Being detected would lead to the inevitable Power co. raid with dogs, meters and machine gun toting Linemen.

Just last week a illegal solar installation was shutdown and the owner was arrested. The heavy fines and multi year prison sentences are a real deterrent to going "Green" these days. Sure a person can go "legit" and have the authorities grant permission but it takes many bribes or a friend in high places to get a hold of a interconnect agreement. Those that don't have to worry about having their own family, friends or neighbors turn them in on the reward call line.

Those of us old enough remember recall when there was little regulation and more of a Wild West type of approach to having PV. That was a great time of innovation and experimentation. Those days are fading now. Small fold-able one or two panel setups with "solar generators" that you can keep hidden from the power cops is about all you can get away with now.

 

[Alloy]

What's you address?

 

[Supervstech]

The solar patrol is usually not out flying the County on Saturday mornings searching for illegal solar installations. So I had the camouflage netting down off my solar panels to maximize my solar production when I heard the ominous "Whup-whup" of helicopter blades coming up the Valley. It was quite the scramble to cover everything back up so as to go undetected. Being detected would lead to the inevitable Power co. raid with dogs, meters and machine gun toting Linemen.

Just last week a illegal solar installation was shutdown and the owner was arrested. The heavy fines and multi year prison sentences are a real deterrent to going "Green" these days. Sure a person can go "legit" and have the authorities grant permission but it takes many bribes or a friend in high places to get a hold of a interconnect agreement. Those that don't have to worry about having their own family, friends or neighbors turn them in on the reward call line.

Those of us old enough remember recall when there was little regulation and more of a Wild West type of approach to having PV. That was a great time of innovation and experimentation. Those days are fading now. Small fold-able one or two panel setups with "solar generators" that you can keep hidden from the power cops is about all you can get away with now.

Is this a real thing?

 

[Steve_S]

I find the story somewhat unlikely BUT there are some really stoopid out there so who knows....
IF you are NOT connected to the grid and therefore not capable of exporting to the grid, there shoudl be zero issues at all.
IF any place (region) actually does such crap and arrests people for having solar then GTFO and get to somewhere where common sense still applies.

Just last week a illegal solar installation was shutdown and the owner was arrested. The heavy fines and multi year prison sentences are a real deterrent to going "Green" these days. Sure a person can go "legit" and have the authorities grant permission but it takes many bribes or a friend in high places to get a hold of a interconnect agreement. Those that don't have to worry about having their own family, friends or neighbors turn them in on the reward call line.

Please Indicate:
Country: State: Closest City/Town. Where such insanity occurs.... people need to know where to avoid.

 

[Plum Crazy Rob]

OMFG

 

[Mattb4]

Is this a real thing?

Well it ain't coke.

I just recently got a mailer about my County is thinking of imposing Zoning rules. There is a group formed up to oppose it and they are notifying the landowners. It along with the people posting to the Forum about trouble with utility companies on using solar zero export and even off grid caused me to have a flight of fantasy.

 

[Steve_S]

I know that where I am (Ontario Canada) if there is no powerlines and no right of way granted to Power Co, they are trespassing as soon as they lay a foot on the land. Noone can arbitrarily grant an easement to allow access to private land. In fact, they are only allowed as far as the Demarcation Point if they do have land access. In many cases that demarcation point is the physical meter.

 

[50ShadesOfDirt]

I'm off-grid, as I think OP is ...

Like anything else, the AHJ wants a building permit process, which is used to calculate property tax base values. Ostensibly for our "safety", but really all about money.

I'm in Colorado, a home-rule state, meaning that building codes & permit processes are decided upon and "enforced" at the local level. In my case, this is my county. Luckily for me, the county is not big into enforcement, and they can barely complete inspections, what with low staffing. Also, as our county is huge, enforcement is usually complaint-driven, so it would be a low risk that a nosy neighbor would turn one in. This is different in the more populated areas, like towns or very dense subdivisions, but if you lived in those areas, you knew this already.

The enforcement for not paying property taxes is currently about the only thing that happens in our county ... there, it is punishable by property seizure/sale by the sheriff's department and the related county tax departments. Even here, I don't believe anyone gets arrested ... you might get evicted, if you don't follow through on the delinquency, but there are numerous legal steps to go through.

I could see fines happening as it relates to code violations .... I'd be very amazed at "arrests", implying a *law* specific to solar is on the books (most likely related to backfeeding), and the sheriiff's deputies were apprised of it, and decided a law was broken and folks had to be arrested. Assuming the person arrested was grid-connected (and probably back-feeding), and with the state and local grid provider known, we can dig through the billion-page documents and do other searches to see if laws are present.

If a lineman got electrocuted, and the investigation led back to a particular homeowner with unpermitted solar, backfeeding as well ... there is a case where I can see an arrest happening, probably related to manslaughter or other existing laws.

Again, for off-grid, with no chance of backfeeding ... I would think only fines for "lack of building permits" are possibly in our future, if solar police folks flew overhead.

I do know that our county uses drone technology (3rd parties) to "check for increased square footage" to add to your property tax bills. It's feasible that, one day, they'll share with the building code department folks. Lots of anti-social folks buried deep in the woods will have a field day at that point ...

 

[Mattb4]

I know that where I am (Ontario Canada) if there is no powerlines and no right of way granted to Power Co, they are trespassing as soon as they lay a foot on the land. Noone can arbitrarily grant an easement to allow access to private land. In fact, they are only allowed as far as the Demarcation Point if they do have land access. In many cases that demarcation point is the physical meter.

It was rather interesting where I live concerning getting utility line easment. It used to be a neighbor could grant you an easement and the Co-Op would be able to run to your land. But just last year they added in a stipulation that once they were granted this easement that they than had the right to run other lines to any other adjacent property without further need to get permission. This with changing the easement from 20 ft to 60 ft is going to really impact being able to get power for many rural properties.

 

[HighTechLab]

I've heard of this...but slightly different than this thread...where I used to live, cannabis farming was somewhat legal but had a HUGE amount of rules, regulations and restrictions.

There was a big upsurge of indoor grows to hide what was going on. Massive amounts of power hungry grow lights. Guys would put up unpermitted solar arrays to power it so they didn't get detected by the power company for massive amounts of power usage. The solar arrays lead the authorities to find the illegal grow, and that's what they got the guys on, not the solar array. Yes, they were using helicopters too, and at times would fly no higher than 500ft above our property (because we had unpermitted solar arrays). Never got busted though because we didn't give them probable cause to search the place for a cannabis grow and it was all off-grid.

 

[Steve_S]

That's a pretty standard way Drug Enforcement agencies used to find indoor grow ops by flagging power bills & usages on lines (losses) for taps. Now with solar being so easy to get and install, that's created a whole new set of things they look for, including solar arrays to power illegal grow ops. I can see someone getting busted with a huge solar array if it was involved in some illegal activity but it would not be because of the "solar" as such. In Canada one of the most popular methods used by the RCMP was flying helicopters & scanning building with IR because of a grows huge heat output, there are some vids online that show the results and it's pretty freakin crazy, the detail etc... You'd think it's like sci-fi but's it's for real.

Honestly, I can't imagine any place in the "Western Free World" that would disallow anyone from installing/using solar power.
- Grid Connected (push to) being quite a different beast but to get paid you gotta follow the rules... pushing power to grid for no return = moronic.
- Grid connected but No Push, only receiving grid power that should be no problem. Can also use grid source power as backup charging for batteries and that would be no different than using a Car Battery charger to charge your car battery.. it's a charger only.
- If installing a huge solar array to power a Grow Op, well Whatever rules apply legal or not but it IS a dead Giveaway ! LOL

Just to screw up all of the DEA etc (snickers) they'll have to weed through all those bitcoin minning farms with massive solar arrays too !

 

[Danke]

The solar patrol is usually not out flying the County on Saturday mornings searching for illegal solar installations. So I had the camouflage netting down off my solar panels to maximize my solar production when I heard the ominous "Whup-whup" of helicopter blades coming up the Valley. It was quite the scramble to cover everything back up so as to go undetected. Being detected would lead to the inevitable Power co. raid with dogs, meters and machine gun toting Linemen.

Just last week a illegal solar installation was shutdown and the owner was arrested. The heavy fines and multi year prison sentences are a real deterrent to going "Green" these days. Sure a person can go "legit" and have the authorities grant permission but it takes many bribes or a friend in high places to get a hold of a interconnect agreement. Those that don't have to worry about having their own family, friends or neighbors turn them in on the reward call line.

Those of us old enough remember recall when there was little regulation and more of a Wild West type of approach to having PV. That was a great time of innovation and experimentation. Those days are fading now. Small fold-able one or two panel setups with "solar generators" that you can keep hidden from the power cops is about all you can get away with now.

You should just move it inside.

 

[Rednecktek]

In Canada one of the most popular methods used by the RCMP was flying helicopters & scanning building with IR because of a grows huge heat output, there are some vids online that show the results and it's pretty freakin crazy, the detail etc... You'd think it's like sci-fi but's it's for real.

Funny enough I've been on the receiving end of that but not for weed. Back in "The Day" (2000-2002) I was living with a couple of friends while we were teaching ourselves how to get going in IT. Not being the book types, we self-taught buy buying old computers, old Cisco routers (the BIG multi-blade ones), big multiple CRT monitors, etc.

Between the obscene amount of power all those systems were drawing and the heat in that back room, the DEA swung by a couple of times and helicopters were not uncommon for a while until they got their warrant and saw what was actually in there.

We probably would have been batter off if 1: one of our friends hadn't been picked up before for selling weed and 2: Mechwarrior 4 had just dropped and we were a competitive team so gaming rigs on top of the 30-ish pieces of other hardware.

 

[DIYrich]

The solar patrol is usually not out flying the County on Saturday mornings searching for illegal solar installations. So I had the camouflage netting down off my solar panels to maximize my solar production when I heard the ominous "Whup-whup" of helicopter blades coming up the Valley. It was quite the scramble to cover everything back up so as to go undetected. Being detected would lead to the inevitable Power co. raid with dogs, meters and machine gun toting Linemen.

Just last week a illegal solar installation was shutdown and the owner was arrested. The heavy fines and multi year prison sentences are a real deterrent to going "Green" these days. Sure a person can go "legit" and have the authorities grant permission but it takes many bribes or a friend in high places to get a hold of a interconnect agreement. Those that don't have to worry about having their own family, friends or neighbors turn them in on the reward call line.

Those of us old enough remember recall when there was little regulation and more of a Wild West type of approach to having PV. That was a great time of innovation and experimentation. Those days are fading now. Small fold-able one or two panel setups with "solar generators" that you can keep hidden from the power cops is about all you can get away with now.

Staring Jennifer Lawrence?

 

[Nobodybusiness]

That’s one thing I

I've heard of this...but slightly different than this thread...where I used to live, cannabis farming was somewhat legal but had a HUGE amount of rules, regulations and restrictions.

There was a big upsurge of indoor grows to hide what was going on. Massive amounts of power hungry grow lights. Guys would put up unpermitted solar arrays to power it so they didn't get detected by the power company for massive amounts of power usage. The solar arrays lead the authorities to find the illegal grow, and that's what they got the guys on, not the solar array. Yes, they were using helicopters too, and at times would fly no higher than 500ft above our property (because we had unpermitted solar arrays). Never got busted though because we didn't give them probable cause to search the place for a cannabis grow and it was all off-grid.

This is one thing I can’t understand.

If you want to do drugs then do drugs.
As long as you aren’t hurting anyone then who cares.

Legalization of all drugs would end Cartels, gangs unnecessary jail time, ect.

I guess nobody learned from the Volstead act.

 

[Skypower]

Staring Jennifer Lawrence?

And Jane Fonda as the Evil government dictator.

 

[Hedges]

Some day we might get fined $100,000 for photovoltaic violations.

Woman fined $100,000 for overgrown weeds and a dirty pool. She's not alone.

Property owners around Tampa Bay are being fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for violating city codes.

www.wtsp.com

Presently, if a utility meter is found not working, once it is repaired, measured usage is used to project back 3 months and bill for the unmetered use. But if due to tampering by the customer, 12 months.

When I realized a small 2-panel easel-style mount had blown over and broken the gas meter, I filed a report with PG&E so they could fix it. Response, "Can't confirm identify of person making report", and nothing done. That was in the summer. During winter, they finally came and fixed it. I was careful to use nearly zero gas, heated with 100% electric, while past usage was estimated.

A guy was fined for growing corn on his own farm to feed his own pigs. Although it didn't "involve" interstate commerce, it "affected" interstate commerce, because it meant he didn't purchase corn shipped in interstate commerce. That decision by the Supreme Court.

Now that some states have a Photon Tax, I could imagine billing for past usage and penalties if someone is caught fraudulently producing their own electricity off the books with photovoltaic panels rather than paying the utility for the power they produce.

 

[Shawn Hayes]

Staring Jennifer Lawrence?

In a deep movie style voice over “voice”:

Starting Jennifer Lawrence, Tom Cruise, with special appearances by Jane Fonda:

Mission Possible 26; Solar Impact
Cutting the weed, the cord and those who grow off grid style!!
Coming to a Blockbuster near you sooooon!!!

 

[Skypower]

That’s one thing I

This is one thing I can’t understand.

If you want to do drugs then do drugs.
As long as you aren’t hurting anyone then who cares.

Legalization of all drugs would end Cartels, gangs unnecessary jail time, ect.

I guess nobody learned from the Volstead act.

I’m all for that except users always seem to impact the rest of society. Driving while messed up is the biggest issue I have. There’s also walking ones too. I’m swerving around zombies as it is. Ahh life and the walking dead in California cities.

 

[DIYrich]

If you want to do drugs then do drugs.
As long as you aren’t hurting anyone then who cares.

Opioids. Cigarettes. Crystal meth. LSD. Etc.