@bozrdang seeings how @legalcanada tagged me in 
i’ll offer my 2 cents, as i’m here to help.
Answering the original questions i would break it down like this.
Want to keep a single strain or plant going for a long time ?
Photo period is the answer when mother plants and clones are considered.
Now whether regular or feminized that depends. If you want to make your own seed for playing around regulars are the easier way to go, you can still make your own feminized seed relatively easy if you want to do that too, but otherwise with feminized plants you don’t have to deal with males which really is nothing once you know. It’s just with fems you are less likely to be left with say holes in your grow from say too many males, or having plant out growing each other as you got more females than expected.
If bred well either should be accurate to the breeders descriptions.
As for why to grow auto’s, i give you the reason i started. I had space in my veg box that was going un-used and autos were a way for me to fill the space amongst mothers, clones, reveg’s and new seedling getting ready for flower. Due to auto’s being able to flower on any time schedule and me having space i figured hey why not give the new ones a try as i was reading how things have changed since the earlier autos with their quality and yield issues.
Well needless to say after trying a couple and coming across some good breeders, they changed my mind so much that yes currently that’s all i run, and have been running for the last year and a bit.
Here’s why i run them now. First the quicker ones finish in 60 days from sprout, that’s damn fast, this allows me to run more plants for variety and genetic hunting purposes for finding those strains that work for me, or interest me. Next the yield and quality on the “good” strains is now no different imo compared to photoperiods, so i will counter @ray here on that point who needs to try running a couple even if just on the side ;). To back that up vs say you talking about growing 12/12 from seed, here’s how it breaks down for me energy usage vs yield over time.
Take a photoperiod, ive always found that they benefit more if you can provide the first couple weeks “2.5-3” of their life with a veg cycle of say 18/6 as even if started under 12/12 they are gonna take that much time anyways before they start thinking of flowering, but once they do they have a better basis for that flowering. After that say its a 8.5week strain that you run at 12/12 and your done, total time is 11-11.5 weeks, with an on hour light time of 147-156hrs. Now take a 8.5 week auto, its done in the 8.5 weeks saving that 2.5-3 weeks per cycle “bonus” but whats the light on hours for it on an 18/6 scheduel ? works out to be 153hrs of on time which is no different than a photo with that early veg cycle. So the time and energy usage for “basic” argument purposes is the same. As for yield personally i was actually yielding more “on average” with the autos than i was with photos. Also one pro with autos is you don’t have to be concerned with light leaks and the likes in comparison. But the cons are auto’s you have to always run from seed, which is either good or bad on how you want to look at it, and they are a one shot deal, so if you run into real bad issues you have less chance to correct them just because of their internal time scheduel, which really is no different than a photo period already half way through flower. As for quality and yield, you can grow some “BIG” autos now adays, and with the good breeders the quality is on par with photoperiod breeders, but i will say there is still a bunch of junk out there.
So ultimately really its just a choice and they all have their own bonuses.
Also your consumption is right around my level, so consider this with autos, i have yielded 56g from a 0.8sqft pc case in 62ish days on around 60w total case usage, or have also gotten 33g from 35watts total in 60days from a 5 gal bucket, so how ever little space you have i think you will easily be able to out grow your regular consumption easily.
PS. were all here to help so look around have fun and ask questions, the people here will answer if they can ;), welcome to OG
got an old camera somewhere with pics on it. ! I’ll try and find it to show you what I mean.take care good luck Mmechelle …sorry for the book 
