Think of light in terms of the size of the area you're growing in. 12" x 12" (one sq. ft.) needs at least 3,000 lumens to grow; 4,000 to 5,000 is much better. Seedlings and early veg plants are small, so uyou can get away with a little less in veg.

My veg lights for the first 2 weeks have been the same for a couple of years now. Go to Wal-Mart, and get a 10.5" clamp light from Wal-Mart for $10, a Y-adaptor (that lets you screw two bulbs into a single bulb socket) for $1.50, and a pair of GE 100 watt (26 watt actual) 6500k bulbs for $7. It's under $20, and you get a rig that looks like this

http://www.frontiernet.net/~mycomput...t/compact1.jpg

That's from ebay, where a guy is selling the whole thing for about $60 delivered. 300% markup for about 30 seconds of work! Man, am I in the wrong business!

Anyway, a couple of those can get 6-8 plants through the first couple of weeks. That's about 3200 to 3500 lumens...keep them a few inches (like 2-3") from the tops of the plants, and you'll do fine.

But once plants start getting bigger, it's a different story. I figure on a decent plant taking up 1 sq. ft. minimum...1.25 is more like it. That's about 6,000 lumens per plant for a good grow. To flower a plant, that's 4 of those 23 watt CFLs. HPS is much more efficient, and you get better light under the canopy to develop lower stems and buds. You'll do better with an HPS. Still, you can drop $80 and get 4 of those two light reflector rigs, and put out about 13,000 lumens...enough for two plants.

btw, don't worry too much on energy costs. Running either 125 watts of CFLs 24 hours a day, or 250 watts of HPS in a 12/12 uses about about 90 kilowatts of energy a month. Find out what you normal charge is per kilowatt (or kWh) per hour. It's about as the same as using a clothes dryer for about 18 hours a month...at .10 a kWh (which is the average in the United States), it's about $9 a month. IMO, you have to have a pretty good sized grow operation (600w or over) to really affect your energy use...and even then, there are ways around it. When I grow, I use laundromats...and it almost completely cancels everything out.