From everything I've read, T5's are the newest, most efficient grow lights right now. I'm using 2 - 4 foot / 4 light bulb T5's for my plants right now and they're working great. I got mine on Ebay. Good luck, let us know how it goes!

Thanks for the tip. I'll have a browse on the web for suppliers.

T5's are pretty good. I have a setup of them that is 8 4 foot 54 watt lamps. High intensity discharge(HID, metal halide) and High pressure sodium are what some would consider the better of the choices. HID is probably closest to actually sunlight but the can be heavy, noisy and make a good deal of heat. HPS offer a different spectrum of light which im not qualified enought to argue for or against.

I will say this. The key to supplemental lighting is lumens and color spectrum. Watts is a great baseline but lumens is the actual light available to the plants.

this site below has a good description of different lights.

mike

Here is a link that might be useful: grow lights

OK, so I've got a dawn simulation lamp for SAD and it exudes 10,000 lumens when switched on full. It can stay on for up to 90 minutes then should be switched off for 30 minutes before switching on again. Do you think this would be sufficient?