So you are saying the T5s actually use less power than they are listed, and the light "can be" confined to those small ranges with specialty tubes?
One thing that I'm wondering about, I've known about Envirolights since they came out, I'd say at least 5 years. How come I haven't read about this before? And I'm still skepical on the "Intensity" compared to HID, old dog/new tricks, y'know?
I'm saying that I'm not quite sure what the 125w and 200w rating means on Envirolites and similar speciality lights, because it sure as hell isn't the input wattage of them. On standard T5 tubes (standard as in not as used in an Envirolite) wattages are pretty much what the wattage draw on them is, plus a little for the ballast. Eg a 39w T5 Fluorescent will use about 42,42 watts of electricity. I'm not quite sure what the second part of your first paragraph means, but putting aside the electrical energy draw, Envirolites will output similar lumens, kelvin temperature and colour spectrum as equivalent kelvin temperature T5 tubes.
How come you haven't read about what before?
You're quite right to be sceptical about the light intensity when compared to HID systems, because HIDs will always win out in comparison to Envirolites and similar systems due to the sheer volume of lumens HIDs put out. Where HIDs are less attractive is in the vegetative growth stage, where the required light intensity is a quarter of what it needs to be in flowering and due to the higher levels of blue light and higher PAR wattage of Envirolites, they can be far more effective and efficient than equivalent HPS systems.
Regarding your question about how many PAR watts an Envirolite outouts, I'm afraid I still can't answer that question, because the data simply doesn't exist. However, what I can do is show you the difference between a spectograph of an Envirolite equivalent fluorescent * and the original Eye Hortilux spectograph I showed you earlier.
Bearing in mind that plants do not use the green/yellow portions of the spectrum (and this is where the majority of lumens for HID systems fall, this is why they have such huge lumen ratings) it's not at all hard to see that the majority of the lumens output are within the PAR range of the visible spectrum that plants use, whereas the Eye Hortilux spectograph outputs the majority of it's lumens within that green/yellow range and far fewer in the blue and red PAR spectrum areas. Not hard to see where all the lumens are coming from is it? I'd say 70-80% of the lumen output from that Eye Hortilux bulb is outside the PAR spectrum. So if that Eye Hortilux 1000w HPS is outputing 140,000 lumens, only 28,000-42,000 lumens are actually being used by the plants, whereas on the other spectograph it's the other way round 70-80% of the spectrum being output is within that PAR range, so 70-80% of those lumens output are being used by the plants. This is precisely why lumen outputs that everyone is so fond of using are extremely misleading.
I read on the SunMaster site that they reckon their 400w HPS outputs about 128w in the PAR spectrum, that's 32% of that bulb lumen output in the PAR spectrum or 55,000 lumens x 32% = 17,600 lumens. 2 x 200w Envirolites, which output approximately 18,000 lumens each would output something like 36,000 x 70% = 25,200 lumens in the PAR spectrum. Not only that, the 2 x 200w Enviro's would cost 45% (123 x 2 = 246w - 456w = 210w) less to run!
* I'm cheating slightly because this is the spectograph of one of the new nlite purple compact fluorescents, but it does well to demonstrate the point
