Battery isn't going to save you any money. Ballast takes power to operate. Okay, so ballast gets power from battery instead of wall...then battery runs out. Then you recharge battery with what? Electricity... from your wall... I guess if you go over to someone else's house every time you need to recharge the battery, you could save some money, but hard for me to believe any battery a human being is capable of carrying is going to run a 1k light for longer than a few minutes anyway.

The price may or may not be decent. I mean, if it's a dual MH/HPS name brand ballast with 4 years and 10 months left on a 5 year warranty, and comes with a nice reflector and cordset and reasonably fresh bulb, then that'd be a pretty good deal. My new 1k light system was $420 -- hah, just realized that's a funnily coincidental price -- but it's good quality stuff with a 5 year warranty and a great reflector and a new good bulb, and I don't feel ripped off. But then again, part of what I'm paying for is the security of knowing that I've lowered the odds of a fire due to cheap equipment, and that's important to me, since I already watched my house burn down once not too long ago and it was...less than pleasant.