Hi, this is my first time posting to these forums, but I've been browsing over the years and have always found some great advice.

I'd like to hear people's experiences about supplementing natural sunlight with artificial lighting. (I can't seem to figure out the right search terms to bring up relevant information.) I have general knowledge regarding grow lamps used on their own. However, I'd like to know how people run their grow lamps (and at what wattage) where there is sunlight for at least part of the day.

I recently moved to a high-rise unit that faces east, which means I have about 4 hours of morning sun a day currently. I run a dual-bulb 400W (MH/HPS) grow lamp over my vegetable planters. The sun on one planter is a bit obstructed by a railing, so I run the HPS from the morning to about 1pm and the MH runs from noon until about 5pm. I am considering changing this to have both bulbs run from 11am (when I lose sunlight) instead, but am still in the experimental phases. Growth has been good so far, though I will eventually run the lamps for longer once they are past seedling phase.

My berries are run under compact florescent bulbs from sunrise to about 8PM. This setup uses scrapped Aerogarden parts (I'm a big believer in reusing where possible), but despite that these aren't the best bulbs out there, I get reasonable growth. Not to mention that my unit wouldn't have the power to run another HID. (I live in Tokyo, where both power and available equipment is fairly limited compared to other places.)

Anyone else have experience with running lights together with sunlight? I'd love to hear how this works for other people.