You are absolutely right! I did not know that if you use more then your baseline (tier 1), the price of kwh goes way up.
electricity is outrageous here in Cali! It does get up near 30 cents per kwh. Specially in the summer! Indeed, lessen the veg cycle lighting time. Once you figure what you get out of the electricity used, it's worth it.
T-5 8 tube X 54w 24 hr with a fantec 65w inline fan on a speed controller saw a diffrence of $40 a month Detroit energy.
I am running 2 Electric Sky 180 Wideband LED Lighting units, 360W total between the two, in a 5'x5'x6.75' space with 73w S-600 Vortex Exhaust, 60W 4" Growneer Inline, for a total 493W consumption, being charged $0.14/kWh I only pay $42/month on top of my monthly bill. Was skeptic of LED lighting at first, especially blurple lights such as ViparSpectra and MArs Hydro, but decided to take my chances on The Green Sunshine Company's Electric Sky 180, it was a better price point than the Amare series I was going to be using. In only 6 days from sprouting out of the ground my three seedlings (Blueberry, Violator Kush, and true LSD strain from Barney's Farm) have already started on their second set of nodes, and this is at 40-42" away from them. With a battery operated bottle humidifier the space is kept at a nice 26-27 degrees with 55-60% R.H, first time growing and it couldn't be going better.Two ES 180's are plenty enough for my purposes, though I plan on getting their ES 300 series, two of which can easily replace a 1000W HPS.