First off, how many of you use CHEAP-ASS equipment to grow your plants? A TOP quality, Hortilux 1000W puts out 145,000, but you aren't using one if you have a $300 setup. Also, a $300 setup means your ballast weighs 40 pounds. A $300 1000W Setup looks like this:
That's $175 for the ballast, $70 for the Generic GE Bulb, and $41 for the cheap reflector, plus tax.
Sure, plenty of people grow with this kind of a setup, but it's like comparing a red/blue/white LED, to my 6 band light. You're not talking apples to apples, when you give me a LOW-BALL 1000W setup. A professional runs a higher quality ballast, higher quality bulb, and a vented hood. These setups retail between $450-$650, not to mention the fan/ducting you still need to purchase at an extra $200 to run the thing...
So what's your issue, the lumen rating? Considering that a 1000W HPS doesn't make anywhere near 1000W of usable light for the plant, who cares about 145,000 lumens? It's not an efficient way of rating HID lights for plants, as they emit a TON of light that plants don't use, including the HPS's peak output in the yellow spectrum. So 36,000 lumens of precision-tailored, photosynthesis specific light, or 145,000 of everything plants don't use, and the little bit that they do? No offense, but at some point you're going to have to acknowledge that you're not giving your plants 145,000 lumens of photosynthetic light with a HPS. You're also going to have to acknowledge, that while HID is the market standard right now for growing, that it is not an efficient light source when you compare how many watts it uses, to how many are available for plant growth.