According to Peter Lehman, director of the Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt State,

…indoor grows consume 10% of all [Humboldt] county’s electricity, enough to power an additional 13,000 homes.

That’s bad enough, for all kinds of reasons, Lehman contends, “but the worst of it locally are the diesel-powered grows in rural Humboldt County.”

Humboldt State’s NOW magazine discusses the issues of indoor growing in their latest piece.  They quote Evan Mills of Lawerence Livermore Laboratory as pinning the blame for the electrical demand on the criminality of cannabis currently as well as “pursuit of security and the desire for greater process control and yields.”