A west facing window is almost certainly not going to get your peppers enough light. You need to supplement.

Never supplement with incandescent. Bad idea. Low pressure sodium is a bad idea, too, although not as bad as incandescent.

This leaves fluorescent (both CFL and the various types of tubes), HID (both metal halide and high pressure sodium), and LED. And woo boy, the wars on this can get downright religious ;) I, myself, am a LED worshipper ;) They're more expensive upfront, but you'll save the money back on your power bill in a year or two, they're even better for the environment than the savings on the power bill suggest (due to poor power factors on fluorescents and HIDs), and I love the growth I'm getting with them. I'm trying to get three more 90W UFOs (I currently have two) so that I can turn my entire library into a giant grow room and grow all the dwarf tropical trees I want year round. :)

For more info on growing plants indoors under lights, you may want to check out the "Growing under lights" forum.

Whatever you choose, be sure to do the math before you purchase! With everything but LED, the power is generally the expensive part, not the bulb and fixture.

Why don't you use a window with Southern exposure?

put it outside. there's no artificial light as efficient as the sun :D

I'll note that "putting it outside" isn't always the best option, even when outdoor temps are warm enough that they won't kill your plant. Compare my peppers here. The cool nighttime temps, while not killing my outdoor peppers, seems to have really slowed their growth. My indoor pepper has grown three times bigger in that time and is now flowering.

Indoor plants really are a treasure. I love the flawless leaves, the perfect comfort you work in, the utter convenience, etc. It's just a shame they take up so much space.

Thanks for the advice. I would have put it in a Southern exposure if I could, but my daughter didn't want it in her bedroom. :)

I thought about the outside but that has some problems of it's own, so I think I'll stick to the current location.

I've been doing a lot of reading about indoor lights, it is a very wide subject!

Karen, I notice your outdoor plants are not hydro. THAT'S the limiting factor. I have pepper plants in hydro and the ground. Both outside. My hydro's are twice the size with fruits nearly of a harvestable size. All plants were started at the same time. I'm afraid your comparison is apples to oranges (or soil to hydro). Not indoor to outdoor. Unless I missed the outdoor hydro pic.

Grizzman is absolutely right. We have yet to develop the technology for the common consumer to produce sun quality lighting. The sun will drastically alter what nutrients are picked up and at what rate, dump hydrogen ions (thus affecting pH), and build sugars.

I ran an experiment last year to compare indoor and outdoor hydro with peppers and tomatoes. My results led me to those conclusions (which I documented on this forum), but only recently did I find that those conclusions had already been reached by the commercial industry. It's just not broken down in the common instructional book.

Peppers and tomatoes will also fruit early when stressed. Often times, early flowering is not a sign of health. It is sometimes the sign of "oh crap I better get to reproducing because poor conditions might kill me first". That's why it is common to stress plants into flowering by starving them for a few days to a week.

When LED gets past 150 lumens/watt it will be more efficient than HID. The best LED is now around 130 lumens/watt.

LED efficiency will improve.

Lumens are a poor scale for plants; this has been discussed here many times. Lumens weighs light frequencies by how close they are to green. Green is the color plants can use *least* effectively. Plants most effectively use red and blue, which is weighed very poorly on the lumens scale because human eyes are insensitive to it. There are scales for plants (PAR and PUR), but lights are sadly rarely rated by them.