Pros and cons of cfl's that are equal in watts to hps?

So if someone wanted a small hobby grow which I suppose would mean 250w, that seems about right, then why would they choose a 250 cfl over 250 hps?? The electricty used is the same I presume, but if the hps is soo much better why do pol use the cfl?

I tried flowering with a t5 and it was a slow process with airy fluffy buds. Put in a 250 watt hps and problem solved. As for Cfl's use over an HPS the only reason would be temp issues.

Temps are definitely the most known reason to use cfl and another reason to use them is space, you can put cfl much closer to the plants so you don't need that much space.

HID=High Intensity Discharge
meaning these lights have better penetration. this is especially good for flowering and it give you nice dense buds. i am growing with cfls right now but am thinking of getting an hps for flowering not sure what i would need for 4 plants tho

250 watts of cfl arent really any cooler than the same in hps but since the heat.is spread out over ten bulbs with cfl the risk of burning your plants is lower.

IMO cfl offers two real advantages:

1. Lower startup cost. You can have 250w of cfl burning for literally under forty bucks and replacement bulbs are cheap and readily available.
2. Increased flexibility. With cfl if you want to run only 130 watts thats trivial. If you want to put lights on individual plants you can, etc.

The only advantage to cfl's that I can see is the accessibility. They are self-ballasted, so you can use them in any standard light socket, and you can find them anywhere.

The disadvantage to cfl is the lumens (or lack thereof). In a 20 watt cfl you get about 1200 lumens. If you get 20 x 20 watt cfls to = 400watts of cfl, you will have about 24,000 lumens. A 400 watt HPS will put out over 50,000 lumens using the same amount of power. Also 20 x 20 watt cfls will put out a lot of heat. Not sure it compares to a 400 w HPS, but it's not a cool room with that many cfls unless you have great ventilation.

To be clear here, although both are much more efficient than incandescent bulbs, both HPS and fluorescent lamps are still both relatively inefficient.

Fluoros will turn about 20% of their inputted energy into light, with about 80% into heat. HPS's are maybe 30% more efficient than fluoros getting maybe 25-28% light per watt.

But the point is if you're running 250 watts of either, you're still generating what amounts to 170-200 watts of waste heat. Not only do fluorescent lamps not run cooler, on a per-lumen basis, they actually run hotter than HPS. Again, CFLs only appear cooler because instead of the heat coming from one 250 watt bulb, you have it spread out over twelve 23 watt bulbs. Although this makes it less likely to burn a plant (or your hand!), the lower light concentration also usually means more node spacing and fluffier buds.

IMO "penetration" is a bunch of hogwash. Two lights that put out comparable lumens in comparable spectra will have similar 'penetration'. The one with more lumens will offer more "penetration". HPS lamps generally offer more "penetration" simply because they're much brighter from a single point source.

The biggest advantages to HPS is that they're more efficient, putting out more lumens per watt, plus the spectrum of light they put out is better suited to growing, meaning that even lumen for lumen, they're still better than fluorescents. So even though HPS setups cost more, over time they'll pay for themselves with increased yield.

The reason why newbies like fluorescents is because the bulbs themselves are dirt cheap, available everywhere, and run out of standard light bulb sockets which are also dirt cheap and available everywhere. So for someone on a limited budget who isn't necessarily very sophisticated about lighting or electronics, its easiest to get started with CFLs. Unlike one big HPS, lots of small CFL bulbs are also easy to scale by increasing or decreasing the number of active bulbs as necessary.