It takes a lot of juice to grow pot indoors, so Sacramento’s major electric utility is gearing up for the heavy demands of recreational marijuana growers come January.
That’s when growing cannabis for non-medical purposes becomes legal in California, though cities and counties retain some control.
Sacramento city officials have moved quickly to welcome the new industry by accepting dozens of applications and issuing permits for pot farms in warehouses citywide.
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District is getting ready, too, by doing research it hopes will conserve energy and reduce the load on aging infrastructure. SMUD researchers are testing LED lighting and air-conditioning systems in cooperation with the city’s current crop of legal, medical pot producers.
Recreational marijuana is just “another commercial industry for us,” said Matthew McGregor, a SMUD project manager who’s been assigned full-time to work with cannabis cultivators. “We saw a data-center rush a few years ago. It’s a similar experience.”
