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Octopus Agile
Comments
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Might not be that far fetched - I've seen drones flying over UK towns looking for evidence that people are using hosepipes.
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I looked this up a bit more and it also mentioned something about solar and electric systems that are not directly on the national grid or suchlike - this may be the same as what you are explaining.
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Hate to keep the off-topic discussion going, but how do you know what a drone is looking for just by looking at it?
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This was a few years ago and it was in the Reading area in Berkshire. It was well known that the water company was flying drones over the town to check how green the grass was on people's lawns - as far as I remember, people phoned them up and they confirmed it was them - it was flying over all the streets in the area at roughly the same time each day so it was pretty obvious. They will then visit you if your lawn is too green or whatever and you have to explain and prove whether you have any exemptions like newly laid grass or suchl.
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The difference here (it was based around plug in solar)is that unlike hosepipe bans, plug in solar is not banned from next month and I doubt the drone army is up and ready for the next 4 weeks 🤣
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Sorry, but I'd bet my house that this is utter trash, and the kind of thing spread on local facebook groups as fact. Do you really believe that private water companies have the legal authority to operate a drone lawn surveillance scheme, and then force customers to prove they weren't using a hose pipe?
But if people were that gullible, and it stopped some using a hose pipe, i can imagine they'd not be quick to shut down the idea.
I'd love to know what RAL colour "too green" is though.
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Green grass - you can water it with a bucket.
Solar panels - you can have them - just not plugged to socket yet.
So drones wouldnt help at all, expensive court cases would have to follow and i doubt any utility company would bother.
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I'm with you on this.. just hearsay. Though I wouldn't bet my house on it :-) Southeast Water are stupid and incompetent enough to try any daft thing; apart from proper engineering.
If what I said helped you, please "Thank" the relevant post. It cheers me up somewhat..0 -
Could be, but under what law would they not be allowed to do this? As long as the drone is above a certain altitude I’m not clear what law they would be breaking - presumably if they then saw something fishy they would try to confirm it in another way,
They definitely use drones for other purposes, so even if you are right that they cannot actually take enforcement action based on drone footage, just flying the drone back and forth up and down all the streets every day or two might act as a deterrent.
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