True Watts vs Effective Watts ?

[BayAreaPhotog]

I have seen this listed on outputs of Monolights. :?: What is the difference between "True Watts per second" and "Effective Watts per second" ?

[Longwatcher]

If I remember right.
True Watts is the actual electric output of the light, effective watts is an advertising term made up because of some equipment can actually give you more light then the original models could, but it was difficult to explain this to people at the time so they came up with effective watts.

Kind of like a certain company is doing these days with the Foven sensors.

A better explaination can be found at alienbees.com somewhere in the FAQ I think.