grow lights

" If growing 1 plant at a time, i would care about it, but realize the cost savings might be a per month." mistyped there... i wouldn't care about pennies per month with a smaller amount of kw-h use.

Short and sweet -- If you don't want to spend a ton, look into the mars and vipar lights. they use a decent diode. have a decent spectrum (a bit too high CCT) and fairly efficient lighting. ~2.3-2.5umol/J range efficacy (relates to electricity use, see below). Since you are growing autoflowers, you can use the "Vege" footprint they suggest. It's usually a little larger than what you want, but a good ballpark. Figure about ~40watts per sq foot with this type of lighting (efficacy dictates that suggestion, greater efficacy = lower wattage suggestion in proportion. if you intend to delve into photoperiods, just know you need 50% more light over 12 hours vs 18. Often a good idea to have a vege light and a bloom light, even if not used at same time. heck, even a small starter light can save tons of electricity while plants are tiny. Longer story: Most lights now do a really good job. The biggest thing you pay for is efficiency. A small garden is a smaller difference, but start talkin about a couple 650w lights and larger and you start to save more than pennies each month. If growing 1 plant at a time, i would care about it, but realize the cost savings might be a per month. Will the light cost more over time? possibly, but the difference will be small, because high efficiency lighting is quite a bit more expensive. The break-even point might take 5 years to reach in less expensive light context. Great thing about autoflowers, is you don't need as intense of light over 18+ hours vs 12 hours for a photoperiod's bloom phase. This can save a bit of money on the equipment. If doing things right, it'll be the same wattage, though. over 12 hours, gotta give 150% light with 2/3rds the original length of time (12 vs 18 hours). (18*1= 18; 12*1.5=18). So, this will save you a few bucks on equipment, because you don't need as powerful of a light over 18 hours as you do over 12. the math can get complicated for some. The specifications for cheaper lights are often incredibly inaccurate. This makes planning a bit difficult when buying the entry level stuff. umol/s - number of photons per second. a "mole" is a very, very large number. a micromole is still a very very large number, but 1/1000th of a mole. it's a unit that allows you to precisely measure/understand chemical reactions that take place per molecule / per photon. umol/J - efficacy... watts per second = joules per second. joules are heat. they can be used to measure waste/inefficiency of the light. (photons vs heat produced... heat is wasted input energy). So the higher this value is, the better the light is. Dividing umol/s by number of actual watts the unit uses will give you umol/J. If you see this is drastically different from what is advertised, something shady is going on with the specs. either lying about umol/s, watts, or umol/J. Another quick tip for any Samsung LM301B/H based light. (not the LM301D, those are a step down and have specs more like the older lm561 - still great options, but not doing math for those). Divide Diode count by number of watts. Anything below .5watts per diode will be okay. Higher efficiency lights will be in the 0.25 - 0.40 watts per diode. This is only for the lm301 based lights. different diodes have differente specs. These will be ~95% of your diodes, typically. Your entry level vipar and mars lights are probably around .5watts per diode at max power. This is a little hot, but saves you hundreds of dollars up front. As long as it's a small garden, probably best way to go.. larger garden you want to care more about efficiency as it'll save you hundreds of dollars or more over 5-7 years. These two things are often lied about on spec sheets of suspsect manufacturers. If umol/J is >3.1umol/J, you can assume they are lying as there is no technology available that does that. If it is a 0 light and they claim anything approaching 3umol/J, they are likely lying. 2.2-2.5 is about as good as you will get with the cheaper lights. if you spend 0/month on electricity for growing, a 2.2umol/J vs a 2.8umol/J rating equates to a proportional amount of money saved while providng the same number of photons (light). .6/2.2 = call it ~25% difference. The 2.8umol/J rated light can be 75% of the watts of a 2.2 rated light and provide the same amount... saving you 25% each month. So -- 2 factors --- Amount of light provided and Efficacy of that light are important to understand. Ambient CO2, you only need 70-80 umol/s per square foot. 9sq feet? you'll want a light with ~630-720umol/s of light. 630 / 2.5 = 250... so 250-300watts would be good. 9ft^2 * 40w = 360watts is probably safer with cheaper lights. if the specs are accurate, i'd work backward from Square Feet using umol/s suggestion i gave. If adding CO2 with regulator etc... go with 100-120umol/s per sq foot.