250w or 400w Please help

[fkshiu]

As I'm sure you've seen from Sanjay's site, there can be huge PAR and electrical differences among 250W setups.

The MAXIMUM PAR setup is an HQI (M80) ballast with SE bulbs. If you use a high PAR bulb like the XM 10K, you'll be getting PAR values GREATER than many 400W setups. However, you'll also be using up around 330W of actual electrical draw.

In contrast, using 250W electronic ballasts with a bluer DE bulb results in less than half the PAR output but you will be using a true 250W of electricity.

As you can see there can be a HUGE discrepancy within the "250W" classification.