The amount of power going to each strand of heat tape is going to be roughly equal.
For example's sake lets say each foot of 4" wide heat tape uses 6w, and each foot of 12" heat tape uses 15w.
If you have a thermostat connected to and the probe on 5 2' lengths of 12" heat tape as a rack, and your thermostat needs to control that to 40% power to maintain the right heat, you are running 60w to that rack to maintain your temperature.
If you also have 5 2' lengths of 4" wide heat tape connected to that thermostat, it will send 60w to those 5 lengths of heat tape, which is the maximum amount of energy for them, which then runs them at a higher temperature than the other 5 strips of heat tape. If the 12" heat tape needs 60% power, the 4" heat tape will now be getting more power than they can handle, which will likely result in them breaking or catching fire
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