willard3
lights are not the only things that use electricity, energy and electricity are not the same thing (even if you want to think so). The electric company does not consider or charge by lumens. If they did then they would not be able to charge anything for running your refrigerator all the day, except when you open the door and the little light goes on. But then all you would need to do is take out the bulb and all that electricity would be free. The electric company (that charges you for the electricity) does not care if it's a light or not, they charge the same regardless. You just cant get past the word "light" to see the picture.
NorEastFla
I agree everything you've said. I had thought about using the wattage of the light bulb itself, but just didn't know if that would be real accurate. Like you mentioned the actual wattage may very. Also I know the ballasts used by some lights must draw wattage/electricity. I too recommended using the Kill-A-Watt meter, I even left several links to some in my second post in this thread as a bit of info for anyone it may help. Although the original poster of this thread was hoping to be able to compare costs before buying the lights, so I'm not sure if it helped him with the exact question. But I agree they are very useful.
P.S. I noticed that you never mentioned "lumens" in the entire post. hehe.