What sort of plants are you trying to grow? We use cheap shop lights from lowes. I think they are 4' T-8's. They each hold 2 bulbs and we do two of the fixtures side by side over a group of plants. It is enough to turn my jade plants red from excess light, my cacti grow great, the houseplants like peace lily do good a small distance away. We also grow small varieties of tomato under them. We put extra bulbs over the tomatoes when they are actively fruiting. Not as good as putting the plants outside, but hey, that isn't always an option.
We have those lights around our fids and nobody seems to be suffering any ill effect. I do shield the fixtures with a bit of tin foil so the light isn't glaring in anyone's eyes.

We started using those fixtures just about a year ago. They get warm, but not hot. Warm enough that we put bread dough on them to rise! Hee hee multi tasking!
Hubbs says if you can get T-5's they have better output, but the T-8's are definitely good enough for our uses at this time.

We can usually get 3 tomato plants under the 2 fixtures working together and the plants are very happy with it right until they start fruiting and need a little more of a light diet. We don't get the plump tomatoes we would get with better lighting or putting them outdoors, but it's better than no tomatoes! Plus the quality of home grown tomatoes are always better than bought ones.
We started some herb seeds recently, and I am looking forward to trying to grow salad greens indoors so we have year round salads totally from indoors!

Sorry, I like plants and may have gotten carried away in my comment. Hope it was helpful.