depends on what your goals are and what you consider a "huge grow op".
A huge grow op for you could be a 10'x10' 6000W set up, a huge grow op for me would be a 40'x40' 20,000-30,000W set up.
Obviously with grow ops this size your ultimate goal is the bottom line, and thats return on investment.
Lets consider your huge op to be 10'x10' with 6000W HPS. Your set up and nutes alone for an op that large is gonna cost around $10,000 (not counting electricity costs). At the most youre gonna be running 80 small autoflowering plants (4 4'x4' trays in a 10'x10' and the trays hold 20 each max), which at the current cost of feminized seeds would run you $75 for 5 making 80 run another $1200. Another thing to consider is space, it takes a pretty particular situation to be able to fit a 10'x10' indoor grow area at your home and still have your home livable. If you have to rent office space or small warehouse that could run you another $1000/month for a total of $3000/grow in overhead for rent. At the most youre gonna yield 0.5oz (14g) per plant with your growing experience giving you 40oz or 2.5lbs. Depending on where youre located, you can probably get rid of it for $2800-3500 (considering the lowryder's potency isnt anything special). Which brings us here:
$10,000 - Set Up Cost
$1,500 - Electricity Cost
$1,200 - Seed Cost
+ $3,000 - Rent
------------------------------
$15,700 Total Cost For First 6000W HPS 10'x10' Grow
Now lets take the best case scenario for your strain and give you 2.5lbs and getting rid of them at top dollar $3,500 wholesale.
$3,500 x 2.5 = $8,750 Income From First Harvest
Subtracting that from total cost:
$15,000 - $8,750 = $6,250 Still In The Hole
After your first run you would still be in debt around $6,250 between you, meaning that your first grow didnt cover cost of set up (which is ALWAYS the goal of the first grow). Instead you could have ran normal plants, vegging for 4 weeks first (which would only add an extra month to your grow time from the autoflowering lowryders at the most), that would have yielded you 6+ pounds total which would not only cover your costs to get going but also already put you in the green some and give you the experience of running your set up with a real plant.
So, long story short, i think it would be a huge waste of time to invest any decent sum of money in a set up and running autoflowering plants.
Update coming soon.
